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ROBERT^ BURNS 




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The 

AULD AYRSHIRE 

OF 

ROBERT BURNS 

By 

T.' F. HENDERSON 

Author of ^^ The Casket Letters and Mary Queen of Scots," 

" History of Scottish Vernacular Literature" " Life 

of Mary Queen of Scots " ; Co-Editor along "with 

W, E, Henley of " The Centenary Burns " 

etc, etc. 



^ 



PHILADELPHIA 
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 

Publishers 






Gift 
if!. HUTCHESON. 



CHAPTER CONTENTS 



I. The Sphere op Burns as Poet Page 1 

II. Ayr and Allow ay .... 24 

III. At Mount Oliphant .... 51 

IV. LOCHLEA AND TARBOLTON, ETC. . . 73 

V. MOSSGIEL, MAUCHLINE, AND KIL- 
MARNOCK 108 

INDEX 142 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Specially Painted for "The Auld Ayrshire of Robert Bums" 
by Monro S. Orr, the Glasgoio Artist 



The Cottage at Alloway, where Burns was 

born Frontispiece 



AGE 



The Tarn o' Shanter Inn, Ayr ... 16 

The Auld Brig, Ayr 32 

Alloway's Auld Haunted Kirk ... 48 

Moiuit Oliphant 64 

The Auld Brig o' Doon 80 

The Old Masonic Lodge at Tarbolton . . 96 

Mary Morison's House, Mauchline . . 112 

Nanse Tinnock's 128 

Poosie Nansie's at Mauchline .... 136 



/ 



THE AULD AYRSHIEE 
OF EGBERT BURNS 



THE SPHERE OF BUBNS AS POET 

It is now nearing one hundred and fifty 
years, since, on a stormy 25th of January, 
two obscure Scottish peasants, in their frail 
clay-built cottage at Alloway in Ayrshire, 
were made happy by the birth of their 
first child — a son whose name was to be 
famous and wonderful, as that of the chief 
poet of his native land, and one of the 
most remarkable bards of all time. As re- 
gards its parentage genius is of course in- 
dependent of rank or station ; it is a gift 
of nature and not of circumstances, and the 
complex laws of heredity that determine 
its production are beyond our ken; but 
in how many instances has genius, from 
lack of scope and opportunity, remained 
hidden and ' inglorious ' ! A peasant's cir- 
cumstances and occupation can hardly be 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

deemed favourable for its culture. His 
wants are simple, his daily tasks only 
faintly exercise his intellect, and their 
monotonous round tends to dull his im- 
agination and deaden his aspirations. 
The rude clay cottage of an obscure 
country clachan, was, thus, a most un- 
likely place for the birth of a poet so 
world-famed as Burns ; and it was un- 
likely to the verge of incredibility that 
poetic achievements of such merit should 
be accomplished by one who was still a 
toiling peasant. Of course, with the im- 
pediments which he shared in common 
with peasants in general, he possessed 
certain advantages in being a Scottish 
peasant; and he was also the son of an ex- 
ceptionally intelligent father; but, making 
allowance for special favouring influences, 
there is in his triumph a certain unique- 
ness that awakens in a peculiar manner 
both our sympathy and our wonder. How- 
ever we may account for that triumph, 
it must be held to betoken an immense 
native endowment, a quite exceptional 
irrepressibility. 

In endeavouring to realise the actual sit- 
uation and circumstances of Burns, we 
2 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

are met of course, at the outset, by the 
difficulty that the Ayrshire into which he 
was born was an Ayrshire which had not 
come under the spell of his enchantment. 
Several generations of Scots have now 
been nurtured on his poems and songs ; the 
subtle influences of his remarkable genius 
have been partly absorbed into the na- 
tion's life, and have assisted to broaden 
the peasant's thoughts and to sweeten and 
civilise his social sentiments. The Ayrshire 
of a hundred and fifty years ago was an 
Ayrshire which had not yet experienced 
the thrill of joining in that great anthem 
of good fellowship, ' Auld Lang Syne ; ' 
whose ideas of manly independence had 
not found expression and ratification in 
the boldly truculent, ' A man's a man for 
a' that;' which had not been subjected 
to the wholesome castigation of such 
mirth-provoking, yet penetrating, satires 
as 'The Holy Fair,' and 'Holy Willie's 
Prayer ;' and which was still unblessed by 
the quickening effects of the many-sided 
sympathy, which is the pervading element 
of most of the Bard of Coila's verse. 
We must therefore begin by admitting 
that the ascendancy of Burns over subse- 
3 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

quent generations increases our difficulty 
in understanding the exact character of 
his circumstances and surroundings — this 
apart from the processes of change, which 
are the inevitable consequence of the lapse 
of time. Yet it is possible to exaggerate 
the dimensions of the gulf that separates 
his generation from ours ; for after all, 
marvellous genius though he was, he was, 
in a sense, the ripe fruit of the preceding 
generations; and his success would neither 
have been so immediate and considerable 
as it was, nor so abiding as it has been, 
had the general tone and sentiment of 
his verse not been in harmony with the 
general tendency of the nation's aspira- 
tion, and the influences that were further- 
ing its intellectual and social progress. 
The age of Burns was an age of advance- 
ment towards more enlightened liberty, 
intellectually, ecclesiastically, socially, and 
politically; and his poetry voiced the spirit 
of that advancement. The Kirk still con- 
tinued to exercise an authority over the 
people which appealed rather to their 
superstition than their intelligence — an 
authority which, in the case of most, 
would now be deemed intolerably tyran- 
4 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

nical; but there was already, amongst both 
clergy and people, a widespread sentiment 
of revolt against the more rigid and vio- 
lent tenets of the old Puritanic creed. It 
is this sentiment of revolt which, directly 
or indirectly, animates much of the verse 
of Burns : to this it owed both some of 
its most peculiar moral merits and its 
occasional moral defects, and much of 
its immediate vogue. It was largely an 
assertion of the claims of what may be 
termed the secular side of human nature 
to fair consideration: a protest against 
the ancient assumption of the essential 
cursedness of the present world, and that 
rigidly serious conception of human con- 
duct, which instead of seeking to distin- 
guish between the use and abuse of the 
arts that minister to enjoyment, tended 
to place mere recreation and amusement 
under a kind of ban. For combating this 
ancient ecclesiastical moroseness, humour 
was perhaps the most effective weapon, 
and seldom has humour been employed 
more effectively than in the ecclesiastical 
satires of Burns. 

When Burns appeared upon the scene, the 

reaction had already begun to set in. The 

5 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

excessively repressive character of the 
Kirk's enactments was bound in the end 
to create it ; but towards its creation the 
Kirk had also directly assisted by cultivat- 
ing so sedulously, though within some- 
what narrow limits, the intelligence of 
the people. Whatever the mistakes and 
faults of its policy, it is undeniable that 
it had at heart what it deemed the people's 
best welfare. If its aims in regard to their 
enlightenment w^ere narrow, its purpose 
was at least earnest and sincere. It had 
a system of parochial education, which 
notwithstanding great variations in its 
practical efficiency, was, on the whole, 
perhaps in advance of that in any other 
country of Europe; and this secular edu- 
cation was supplemented by a systematic 
doctrinal training and instruction from 
which no one was permitted to be exempt 
until deemed fit to become a communicant 
of the Kirk. On every adult of the parish 
attendance had also, until lately, been 
obligatory at the parish kirk. There the 
parishioners listened to long doctrinal and 
hortatory harangues, which, preposterous 
and extravagant though in certain respects 
they might be, appealed, in a manner, to 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



their understanding and conscience, as 
well as to their terrors and superstitions. 
On the whole those addresses tended to 
promote thought and reflection, and once 
thought and reflection are provoked, it is 
difiicult to assign a limit to their action. 
So much for the causes of the reaction 
created directly or indirectly by the policy 
of the Kirk. Co-operating therewith were 
a variety of outside influences, which were 
gradually emancipating both clergy and 
people from the narrow and more ped- 
antic notions of the previous centuries. 
The new era of invention and industrial 
progress had begun to show signs of its 
arrival, and widening commercial inter- 
course was assisting to introduce more 
practical and common-sense notions re- 
garding duty and conduct. New ideas as 
to human liberty had also begun to dawn 
upon the world, and it was becoming 
more and more difficult to interfere with 
the right of private judgment. Moreover, 
the splendid literature of England had 
begun to cast its spell over the Scottish 
intellect. The old hide-bound ecclesiastical 
literature was now threatened with for- 
midable rivalry, and the period of the 
7 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

nation's obsession by it was drawing to a 
close. 

Finally, the Kirk's domination, despotic 
and absolute as it might seem to be, had, 
as regards the bulk of the people, been 
always, perhaps, more ostensible than 
real. In its palmiest days the Kirk had 
never quite conquered the heart of the 
nation. The causes of its peculiar ascend- 
ancy were largely fortuitous. It was it- 
self the product of a reaction, and its aims 
were too inflexible, too one-sided, too aus- 
tere to commend them to the nation's per- 
manent acceptance. As regards the general- 
ity of the people, it never really subdued 
the old immemorial superstitions ; and 
amongst the bulk of them ancient pagan 
ideas and sentiments, which had sur- 
vived during the Catholic ages, were still 
left unmastered by Christianity — ' Nature 
and Nature's laws' work out their ends 
only by slow and gradual processes, and if 
rashly and violently interfered with, are 
certain, sooner or later, to manifest resent- 
ment. Even among many of the more 
devout, the natural healthy instincts for 
recreation demanded a fuller outlet than 
was consistent with the strictness of Puri- 
8 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

tan gravity ; and the need of diversion, if 
interfered with in one direction was cer- 
tain to assert itself in another. While 
exercising a certain influence over the 
conduct and habits of the community, the 
Kirk's control suffered from narrowness 
of outlook and insufficient enlightenment. 
It left largely out of account a whole world 
of sentiment and emotion — the sentiment 
and emotion which is the outcome of 
general social intercourse, of the varied 
practical experiences of life, and of con- 
tact with the sights and sounds of external 
nature. 

Under the auspices of the Kirk, the noble 
succession of the old Scottish poets had 
come suddenly to a close. All secular 
verse — all verse that did not echo in some 
form the doctrines of Protestant theology, 
that was not stamped with the Kirk's 
image and superscription — came under 
taboo; the old popular songs had been, 
in a manner, and for a time, superseded 
by devout parodies of them, entitled ' The 
Gude and Godly Ballats ' ; prose literature 
concerned itself only with theological and 
ecclesiastical themes ; and Scotland ceased 
to have a native literature worthy of the 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 



name; but the predilection for the old 
ballads and songs was not eliminated from 
the hearts of the people ; and though, for 
some generations, none of them were cir- 
culated in print, many of them were pre- 
served in rude traditional forms. Some 
time before the arrival of Burns the Puri- 
tan rigour in regard to the old native 
literature had become relaxed ; and with 
the increasing appreciation of the literar 
ture of England a revived interest in the 
old vernacular verse had been awakened 
through the exertions of Allan Ramsay 
and others. 

Various circumstances had thus created 
for Burns his peculiar opportunity. Had 
he been born a few centuries earlier, he 
would not have had the same sphere for 
the exercise of his special genius, and no 
such sufficient incentive to exercise it. 
Even could he have obtained circulation 
for his verse, the nation would not have 
been in the same mood to welcome it as 
it was towards the close of the eighteenth 
century. Great, also, as was the native 
vigour of his genius, his poetry was, neces- 
sarily, influenced by the special circum- 
stances of his own time ; and but for the 
10 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

old poetic tradition to which he fell heir, 
it would, also, have lacked some of its 
most characteristic qualities, and could 
hardly have appealed, with quite the 
same effect, to the heart of the Scottish 
nation. 

For the attainment of his illustrious posi- 
tion as the national poet of Scotland, Burns 
was also greatly indebted to his peasant 
circumstances — circumstances which, in 
the case of one less remarkably dowered 
than he, might have been actually dis- 
qualifying. As it was, his peasanthood en- 
dowed him with qualifications for his 
special role which were possessed neither 
by Ramsay nor Fergusson, even had they 
approached him in genius. Exceptionally 
gifted though he was, he shared the 
peasant's appreciation of the simple, in- 
genuous sentiments of the old ballads and 
songs. Through his peasant's heart the old 
Scottish poetic traditions made a more 
direct appeal to him than otherwise they 
would have done ; and though his acquaint- 
ance with the classic models of England 
greatly benefited his poetic taste, and 
made him a much more intelligent, re- 
fined and accomplished artist than he 
11 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

otherwise could have been, it was mainly 
by the delineation of his own peasant 
circumstances and experiences that he en- 
abled his countrymen and the world to 
recognise 

' the boundless store 
Of charms that nature to her votaries 

yields.' 
Elxcept when he occasionally — and mis- 
takenly — essayed English verse, Burns at- 
tempted no direct, deliberate studies of 
the aspects and features of nature, and 
essayed no detailed poetic landscapes. He 
recognised that, as he himself expressed 
it, he could not 

'show 

To paint with Thomson's landscape 
glow.' 
The allusions to scenery and to the moods 
and aspects of nature in his verse are for 
the most part incidental. They help to 
give it colour and vitality, or to illustrate 
and vivify his passing thoughts and senti- 
ments ; and they are introduced seemingly 
without effort and almost casually. By 
virtue of his constant familiarity with 
nature, they occurred to him as spontane- 
ously as they would to any other peasant, 
12 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

although, of course, the instinctive art of 
the genius and poet is manifest in the 
manner of their introduction and in the 
vivid picturesqueness of their use. A 
peasant's as well as a poet's keen sym- 
pathetic appreciation of nature is ex- 
pressed in the following stanza of his 
' Epistle to William Simson ' : 
' O Nature ! a' thy shows and forms 
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms, 
Whether the summer kindly warms 

Wi' life and light ; 
Or winter howls in gusty storms 
The lang, dark night.' 
Great as was the poetic susceptibility of 
Burns, and admirable as was his gift of 
terse expression, his incidental allusions to 
nature and animal life owe much of their 
vivid reality, and some of their most felici- 
tous and characteristic touches, to the fact 
that he was a peasant. 'In order to pro- 
duce a picturesque effect in poetry' — wrote 
Scott, in reply to the suggestion of Warren 
Hastings that he should make ' the gallant 
Nelson ' the subject of a lay — ' a very inti- 
mate knowledge of the subject described 
is an essential requisite.' Had he sought 
for an illustration of this theory he could 
13 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

have found none more apt than the poetry 
of Burns, which— especially his vernacular 
verse — is unsurpassed for vivid pictur- 
esqueness, picturesqueness derived from 
knowledge so thorough and detailed that, 
with genius to inspire him, it supplied 
him with material for his effects almost 
spontaneously. How minutely and admir- 
ably observed, and how exquisitely pictur- 
esque the description of the idiosyncrasies 
and diversions of Caesar and Luath in the 
introduction to the confabulation of ' The 
Twa Dogs ' ! How redolent of peasant as- 
sociations the flow of half-melancholy, 
half -humorous reminiscences in 'Poor 
Mailie's Elegy'! And what a wealth of 
peasant experience, knowledge and sym- 
pathy are enshrined in every verse of 
that, after its own fashion, quite match- 
less ' Address of the Auld Farmer to his 
Auld Mare Maggie ' ! Compared with the 
masterly touches of Burns' portrait of 
the auld farmer and his mare, Tennyson's 
witty sketch of the 'Northern Farmer' 
seems perfunctory and superficial. For the 
accomplishment of the one portrait genius 
was aided by the peculiar knowledge, sym- 
pathy and appreciation of the peasant's 
14 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

son ; the other, with all its cleverness, is 
only half true. It is mainly ironic, and 
this because it is informed by imperfect 
knowledge and sympathy — the knowledge 
and sympathy of one who, with all his 
acute poetic instinct, was, in this case, 
mainly an outside observer of certain 
class peculiarities. 'The Northern Farmer' 
is, in truth, little more than a poetical jeu 
desprit, and hardly ranks in estimating 
the character of Tennyson's genius. ' The 
Auld Farmer,' on the other hand, has 
more than plausible claims to rank as the 
masterpiece of Burns, notwithstanding the 
brilliancy of such achievements as 'The 
Jolly Beggars' and 'Tam o' Shanter.' It 
touches himself more nearly than they 
do, it expresses his peasant heart in a 
manner that they necessarily do not do, 
it sounds a deeper note, and its humour 
is of a finer kind, because it is in closer 
association with 

' the true pathos and sublime 

Of human life.' 
But it is not merely in set pieces— as in 
those now mentioned and several others 
that might be quoted — dealing with spe- 
cific peasant themes, that Burns reveals 

15 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

the peculiarly intimate knowledge of na- 
ture possessed by the discerning peasant ; 
this knowledge is manifested continually 
in the character of his incidental allusions, 
in his vivid epithets and phrases, and oc- 
casionally, in short descriptions, which 
seem to suggest themselves to him spon- 
taneously and almost irresistibly. It is 
hardly necessary to mention the exquisite 
stanza on the rocky woodland stream in 
' Halloween.' Here we have a poetic pic- 
ture, with every detail of which the poet 
had been lovingly familiar, perhaps earlier 
than he could remember : 
' Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, 

As thro' the glen it wimpl't ; 
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays ; 

Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't ; 
Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, 

Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle ; 
Whyles cookit underneath the braes, 
Below the spreading hazel, 

Unseen that night.' 
Much less elaborate in detail, but quite as 
vivid in effect, and because it has to do 
with sentient life, appealing less to our 
fancy and more to our human sentiments, 
is the following winter scene : 
B 17 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

' Listening the doors an' winnocks rattle, 
I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 

O' winter war, 
And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle 

Beneath a scaur,' 
An even still more expressively emotional 
note is struck in the following stanza, 
where the gloomy signs of the oncoming 
of a stormy night are made to symbolise 
the dark forebodings of the poet at the 
prospect of being compelled to leave his 
native land : 
' The gloomy night is gath'ring fast. 
Loud roars the wild inconstant blast ; 
Yon murky cloud is filled with rain, 
I see it driving o'er the plain ; 
The hunter now has left the moor, 
The scattered coveys meet secure ; 
While here I wander, prest with care 
Along the lonely banks of Ayr.' 
But all the three stanzas have this in 
common — they breathe the deep sym- 
pathetic interest in the scenes of nature, 
to be acquired only by constant com- 
munion with it. These pictures, painted 
by the vivid art of genius, had already 
unconsciously impressed themselves upon 
18 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



the poet's mental retina in the course of 
his everyday experiences. Every stroke 
expressed what he fully knew and felt, 
and the whole impression indicates a just- 
ness and completeness of appreciation 
that is beyond criticism. 
But it is as much in lines and phrases 
and epithets, as in stanzas or set poems, 
that the intimate peasant knowledge of 
Burns reveals itself. Here are a few ex- 
amples of its incidental use to add life 
and picturesqueness to his narrative, or 
to supply him with an apt comparison : 
'The hares were hirplin' down the furs' 
[in the early morning] ; * The thresher's 
weary flingin'-tree ' ; ' An' heard the rest- 
less rattons squeak about the riggin' ' ; ' A 
ratton rattled up the wa' ' ; ' When lyart 
leaves bestrew the yird'; 'When winds 
rave thro' the naked tree' ; 'And partricks 
scraichin' loud at e'en ' ; ' Ye curlews call- 
ing through a cloud, ye whistling plover'; 
'The kye stood rowtan i' the loan'; *Ye 
[the deil] like a rash buss stood in sight, 
wi' weaving sough ' ; ' Awa ye squattered 
like a drake on whistling wings,' etc. 
The truth is that the peasanthood of 
Burns enters into the very fibre of his 
19 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

verse, into its every tone and manner. It 
is this which communicates to it its speci- 
ally piquant charm, as compared with the 
verse of such nature poets as those of the 
highly accomplished and semi-philosophi- 
cal lake school, where nature and sim- 
plicity assume the form of a cult. Less 
subtle, less idealistic, ruder, more homely, 
more plain-spoken than they, he is at the 
same time more picturesque, much more 
broadly humorous, truer, stronger, more 
graphic and realistic. He indulges little in 
meditative musings, or exalted raptures, 
or when he does, the virtue goes out of 
him; he mainly utters with passionate, 
sincerity, or humorous mirth, his peasant 
observations, thoughts and emotions, and 
relates with vivid fidelity what as a pea- 
sant he has seen and experienced, and 
therefore thoroughly knows. To know 
peasant life as he knew it, and to describe 
it as he has described it, implied, of course, 
that he was quite an exceptional peasant. 
He had a very special poetic training, he 
possessed considerable book-lore, he was 
gifted with a quite marvellous insight 
into men and things, and with a poetic 
genius and skill which are the possession 
20 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

of only the elect of the human race ; but 
with all he was by birth, descent and cir- 
cumstances, at heart a peasant, and he 
expressed himself with most significance, 
and in the highest terms of his art, when 
he expressed himself so to speak in 
peasant terms. 

Nor except when, following the advice 
of certain learned mentors, he intermit- 
tently essayed to imitate the methods of 
the classic English poets — and his models 
here were too frequently the pompously 
frigid and modishly artificial versifiers of 
the eighteenth century — did he seek to 
go outside his own experience for a sub- 
ject. He attempts no ideal or mystical 
romances. He in fact avoids almost every 
kind of idealism, and his references even 
to history are little more than incidental, 
if we except the rapturous 'Scots wha 
hae.' His standpoint is mainly that of 
the shrewd, observant, warm-hearted and 
passionate peasant. His theme is virtually 
the peasant Ayrshire within the limits of 
his personal experience ; the life he depicts 
is that of its rough and homely farms, 
and its poor and squalid villages; those 
whose adventures he relates, whom he 
21 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

addresses, or eulogises or satirises being 
those whom he knew, were few of them 
known beyond the bounds of Ayrshire, 
while the majority were of very humble 
station, and some of them of by no means 
reputable life and conversation ; the inci- 
dents he celebrates are founded on what 
he himself has experienced or observed, 
or on traditions of his native district; 
most of his love lyrics have a distinctly 
rustic setting; and in general it may be 
affirmed that while his genius is stamped 
with a universality which makes an ap- 
peal to every rank and station, and se- 
cures for it appreciation in every country 
and clime where white men congregate, 
its universal appeal is due to the fact that 
he has represented with adequate depth 
and fidelity the microcosm within his own 
ken. His experiences were as varied and 
complete as his peasant sphere permitted 
them to be ; the good and the bad, and all 
the varied idiosyncrasies of human nature 
within his own sphere were to him an 
open book ; and his merit lies in the vivid- 
ness, picturesqueness and truth with 
which he has depicted life as he lived and 
knew it in his native Coila. Coila was the 
22 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

Muse to which he professed to owe his 
inspiration : she it was who taught him 
' Manners-painting strains, 
The loves, the ways of simple swains.' 
And it was Coila which he more particu- 
larly aspired to celebrate in his verse : — 
' Auld Coila, now, may fidge fu' fain, 
She's gotten bardies o' her ain ; 
Chiels wha their chanters winna hain, 

But tune their lays, 
Till echoes a' resound again 
Her weel-sung praise.' 



II 

AYR AND ALLOWAY 

The chief charm of Kyle or Coila, the 
central district of Ayrshire, is its wooded 
hollows and its rocky streams. In the 
uplands the view is extensive in all direc- 
tions, but possesses no striking features 
except towards the sea with the pic- 
turesque Arran mountains. The eastern 
portion consists mainly of bleak and bare 
moorland country rising into stretches 
of rounded hills of no great altitude ; 
and the cultivated lower ground though 
pleasantly undulating is lacking in variety 
and interest but for the fringes of wood 
along the banks of the rivers and streams. 
It is a typical agricultural country of the 
less romantic districts of western lowland 
Scotland ; and with the general absence of 
fences and enclosures, the larger propor- 
tion of boggy and uncultivated land, and 
the generally mean and tawdry character 
of the farm buildings, the country in the 
time of Burns must have presented a 
24 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

more uninviting appearance than it does 
now. But every country has its own 
peculiar attractions for those born and 
bred in it; for them it has a secret fas- 
cination which no stranger is able pro- 
perly to appraise ; its presence is associ- 
ated with much that is dearest to them 
in life; even when it ceases to be the 
theatre of their daily experiences it con- 
tinues to haunt their dreams, and to 
assert itself as the life companion of their 
souls. It is with enthusiastic appreciation 
that Burns refers to 

' Auld Coila's plains an' fells, 
Her moors red-brown with heather 

bells, 
Her banks and braes, her dens and 
dells.' 
And while his fancy was chiefly capti- 
vated by its woods and haughs, and its 
verdant summer scenes, its barer and 
bleaker aspects also powerfully appealed 
to certain of his moods : 
' O sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods 
When lint - whites chant amang the 

buds. 
And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids, 
Their loves enjoy : 
25 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

While thro' the braes the cushat croods 

With wailf u' cry ! 
Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me, 
When winds rave thro' the naked tree ; 
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree 

Are hoary gray ; 
Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, 
Dark'ning the day ! ' 
It has been noted by Keats and others 
as rather remarkable that though Burns 
spent his boyhood within reach of the 
sea, lived most of his years within view 
of it, and was resident for several months 
in the seacoast towns of Ayr and Irvine, 
the sea is but sparingly alluded to in his 
verse. That he was not insensible to its 
fascination we learn from the address of 
the Muse of Coila to him in ' The Vision ' : 
' I saw thee seek the sounding shore, 
Delighted with the dashing roar.' 
In ' Had I a cave ' he further declares : 
' Had I a cave 
On some wild distant shore 

Where the winds howl 
To the waves' dashing roar, 
There would I weep my woes,' etc. 
In ' The Brigs of Ayr ' we have also this 
vivid picture of still midnight : 
26 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

' The tide-swollen firth with sullen- 
sounding roar, 
Thro' the still night dash'd hoarse 

along the shore; 
All else was hush'd as Nature's closed 
e'e,' etc. 
Here, moreover, is another seascape more 
charged with human sentiment : 
' Along the solitary shore, 

Where fleeting sea-fowls round me fly, 
Across the rolling, dashing roar 
I'll westwards turn my wistful eye.' 
And here is yet another, in two amongst 
the most mournfully pathetic lines that 
perhaps poet ever penned : 

' The wan moon is setting behind the 

white wave, 
And Time is setting with me, O.' 
But these quotations pretty nearly ex- 
haust all his allusions to the sea that can 
properly be termed poetic. His most 
frequent references to it are as merely 
an impediment to communication, as in 
' Auld Lang Syne ' : 

' But seas between us braid hae roared.' 

In the general character of his allusions 

to it there is a monotonous sameness. He 

did not know its moods and aspects with 

27 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

the same intimacy as he did the rustic 
scenes of Coila; and of the picturesque 
grandeur of the peaked Arran mountains, 
bounding part of the western horizon, he 
makes no mention. 

The Ayrshire country most intimately as- 
sociated with the life and the verse of 
Burns is included within the radius of a 
very few miles. The clay cottage of his 
birth and early childhood lies about two 
miles south-east from the town of Ayr ; , 
Mount Oliphant is about other two miles 
south-eastward, and Lochlea and Moss- 
giel lie about ten and twelve miles re- 
spectively to the north-east. Episodes of 
his life are associated with places some- 
what farther afield; especially with the 
smuggling village of Kirkoswald near the 
Carrick shore, and the seaport town of 
Irvine ; while he was latterly pretty well 
acquainted with the ' streets and neuks 
of Killie,' which on his ' weel-gaun fiUie ' 
he was frequently accustomed to visit on 
market days. 

Of town life, such as it then existed in re- 
mote and old-world Ayrshire, Burns ob- 
tained some impression at a very early 
period of his existence, for the county 
28 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



town was little more than two miles dis- 
tant from AUoway; and such grandeurs 
as it could show in shops and buildings 
must have been to him subjects for youth- 
ful curiosity and wonder, almost as soon 
as he began to speculate about the outside 
world. Amongst his earliest recollections 
must have been those of his Sunday visits 
to the parish church, where he listened 
to ' Dundee's wild- warbling measures,' or 
' plaintive Martyrs,' or * noble Elgin,' sung 
doubtless with many quavering grace 
notes and much grating discord, but with 
a much greater volume of some kind of 
melodic sound than in the clay cottage 
at home. The gentle prelections of ' Dal- 
rymple mild,' and the more learned ones 
of the 'heretic,' though equally amiable, 
* Dr Mac, must alike, for some time, have 
conveyed to his ear much that his infant 
intellect was unable to assimilate ; but 
the benevolent personalities of the two 
clergymen were alone fitted beneficially 
to impress a nature so quick and sensitive. 
Of Dalrymple he told Ramsay of Ochter- 
tyre that his father was so much pleased 
with his strain of preaching and bene- 
volent conduct that he embraced his re- 
29 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

ligious opinions, though practically he 
remained a Calvinist.' Burns, we know, 
did not remain a Calvinist: indeed he 
hated Calvinism with his whole mind and 
heart and soul; and the prosecution of 
his friend Dr Macgill for heresy, on ac- 
count of what were deemed Socinian opin- 
ions, evoked his warmest scorn towards 
those he termed the ' rotten-hearted Puri - 
tans' of the Presbytery, whose 'heretic 
blast' he vivaciously burlesqued in the 
' Kirk's Alarm.' 

In other than ecclesiastical respects his 
vicinity to Ayr was, in his youth, so he 
himself states, of great advantage to him. 
When the family, in his seventh year, 
removed to Mount Oliphant he was two 
additional miles away from it, but he was 
now quite able to make the longer journey, 
and his social disposition being, even in his 
early youth, 'without bounds or limits,' 
he was quite inclined to utilise every op- 
portunity to visit it that fell in his way. 
He told Dr Moore of his acquaintanceship 
there with ' other yonkers who possessed 
superior advantages' and who lent him 
books to read and helped him to learn 
French; but we cannot but believe that 
30 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



he had other interests in the town of a 
boy's usually miscellaneous character, and 
that its facilities for diversion were uti- 
lised with quite as much eagerness as 
those for mental improvement. Later he 
had, of course, occasion often to visit it 
as man and farmer, even when resident 
at the more distant Lochlea or Mossgiel. 
His poetical and social gifts secured him 
the friendship not only of its two excellent 
clergymen, but of such prominent citizens 
as Robert Aiken, solicitor, and surveyor of 
taxes — the 'Orator Bob' of 'the Kirk's 
Alarm' — John Ballantyne, banker, and 
some time provost of the burgh, lawyer 
Willie Chalmers, and Major Logan of 
Park, ' thairm-inspirin,' rattlin' Willie'; 
and he must also have had a pretty com- 
prehensive acquaintanceship amongst its 
humbler citizens, besides being, not un- 
frequently, the life and soul of the com- 
panies who foregathered at its inns and 
hostelries. When market days were wear- 
ing late, he probably often left it, if not 
in the highly primed condition of Tam o' 
Shanter, at least in as pleasantly exhilar- 
ated mood as the 'Auld Farmer' and his 
mare Maggie : 

31 



S c si 
■8«2 £ S 






^■13 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

'When thou was corn't, and I was 
mellow, 

We took the road aye like a swallow.' 
Of this 'Auld Ayr,' the streets of which 
were paced as boy and man by Burns, 
almost every outside nook and corner of 
which was famihar to his eyes, where he 
diverted himself when a bare-footed and 
ragged youngster, where later he stood 
gossiping and joking with its ' honest men 
and bonnie lassies,' and whose inn parlours 
resounded to the laughter evoked by his 
humorous sallies, only traces of the mere 
skeleton remain. The High Street still 
winds its way over the identical strip of 
earth it then occupied; but the modern 
thoroughfare with its electric poles, its 
tramway lines, and its broad side pave- 
ments, is quite a different one from the 
ancient, roughly cobbled, irregular high- 
way without side walks of any kind. And 
if the face of the thoroughfare would now 
be unrecognisable by Burns, it would be 
quite as difficult for him to identify the 
street from the character of its buildings. 
Here and there the eye lights on the 
thatched roof of a shabbily plain two- 
storey house ; but its humble, antique as- 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

pect seems quite put out of countenance by 
the slated pretentiousness of its modern 
neighbours ; and it but faintly assists us 
in our attempts to conjure up the ' Auld 
Ayr ' of the time of Burns, with its rows 
of thatched and picturesquely gabled 
houses, its mean, small-windowed shops, 
its chapman billies' stands, and its old- 
world ease and dulness, only stirred into 
some show of temporary bustle and acti- 
vity on fair or market days. The High 
Street of to-day, quite modern in its 
general aspect, is, it is to be hoped, merely 
in a transition state towards a more har- 
monious and beautiful architectural unity; 
but meanwhile it is less satisfying to the 
artistic sense than would liave been the 
humble picturesqueness which has been 
almost entirely effaced. The buildings are 
provokingly irregular both in height and 
in their architectural features, and the 
main effect of their combination is that 
of heterogeneous confusion ; but there is 
abundant evidence, both in the character 
of the shops and in the appearance of the 
passers-by, of comfort and prosperity ; for 
the street is now the business and shopping 
centre of a town that has increased more 
34 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



than tenfold in population since the time 
of Burns, and is now a sort of miniature 
Glasgow, or Greenock, or Paisley, with 
the additional advantages of sea-bathing, 
and, in the immediate neighbourhood, of 
quite an embarras des riches, in the choice 
of golf courses. 

Of the inns frequented by the poet, that 
now named the 'Tarn o' Shanter' is ap- 
parently the sole survivor. It is substanti- 
ally the same old inn at the blazing ingle 
of whose parlour the poet imagines Tarn 
as 'planted right,' with Souter Johnnie 
'at his elbow,' and bowls of 'reaming 
swats ' before them ; but the environment 
of the inn is as completely changed as the 
dress and appearance of its frequenters, 
and even the remains of the old gateway 
of the town, which conferred on the hos- 
telry a certain antique dignity, have long 
been removed. 

Such prominent features of the town as 
towers and steeples have, of course, multi- 
plied with the growth of the population 
and the increase of denominational meet- 
ing-houses; but the two immortalised in 
' The Brigs of Ayr ' no longer survive, the 
' drowsy steeple clock ' of the old Tolbooth 
35 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

having ceased to number the hours of 
the day in 1826, and its clock and bells 
having been transferred to a new and 
loftier Wallace Tower, erected in 1834. On 
the site of the old horse fair now stands 
the lonely-looking statue of the Bard 
himself, amid parterres of flowers, and 
fronting the showy railway station and 
hotel — a strangely old-world, agricultural 
figure to be found in such a convention- 
ally urban situation; and, doubtless, did 
it suddenly become endowed with anima- 
tion, it would be a little puzzled to know 
where it was, or to find its way to Lochlea 
or Mossgiel. 

The river, of course, runs, as formerly, to 
the sea, and behaves, when in flood, very 
much as it did in the time of Burns ; but 
the Ratton Key has long ceased to wit- 
ness 'winter speats,' both it and the lar- 
ger quay having been superseded by the 
harbours, docks, and piers suitable for a 
thriving modern commercial port. The 
brig which Burns saw when first 'buskit 
in its braw new coat,' became, by the 
floods of 1877, a ' shapeless cairn,' as Burns, 
by the mouth of the Auld Brig, prophesied ; 
but the Auld Brig, almost the sole sur- 
36 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

viving memento of the Auld Ayr of the 
poet, has itself, for some years, practically 
ceased to be a brig; and to prevent it, 
like its rival, becoming a shapeless cairn, 
la a problem that is taxing the wits of 
engineers and architects. Whether it will 
continue to ' warstle wi' Time' much longer 
or not, the transforming influence of that 
agency is abundantly manifest on both 
banks of the river which it spans ; and could 
we conceive the Bard before the early 
hours of some winter morning revisiting 
there the glimpses of the moon, he could 
hardly realise that the buildings on the 
King's -Kyle side formed part of the 
'ancient burgh of Ayr'; while the modern 
Newton on the Stewart-Kyle side of the 
river has quite blotted out of existence 
the small thatched village of that name, 
which was blessed by the ' meek and mim ' 
ministrations of ' sairie Willie Water-foot.' 
But Time has not only completely trans- 
formed the ' Auld Ayr ' with which Burns 
was familiar ; it has also so extended its 
boundaries as completely to alter the char- 
acter of its immediate landmarks. The 
chief highway to the cottage and the Brig 
of Doon — the Oarrick Road, which had no 
37 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

existence in the eighteenth century — is 
lined, almost half way to the cottage, by 
a constant succession of smart suburban 
villas, which are succeeded by trim hedges 
and well-built walls, bounding the well- 
cultivated fields, where early potatoes are 
grown for the delectation of the good folks 
of Glasgow, or fertile grazing grounds 
trimly adorned with clumps of trees, and 
browsed on in comfortable content by 
thriving Highland and Ayrshire cattle. 
These model agricultural fields and grass- 
lands can only by a great effort of the 
imagination be identified with the wild, 
uncultivated moorland that of old bor- 
dered the approach to 'AUoway's auld 
haunted kirk,' where the traveller passed 
successively the ragged clump of birks 
and the 

' Meikle stane 
Where drunken Charlie brak's neck 
bane,' 
the whinny knolls and the cairn, 

'Where hunters found the murder'd 
bairn,' 
and the solitary 

' thorn abune the well, 
Where Mungo's mother hanged hersel'.' 
38 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

Whatever the truth or falsehood associ- 
ated with these weird traditions, the scene 
was entirely in keeping with them ; but 
it is not so now: their memorials have 
all perished, and left not a wrack behind. 
Smug respectability and prosperity per- 
vade the whole region from the Auld 
Brig of Ayr to the Auld Brig of Doon. 
The ruined Kirk Alloway and the Auld 
Brig have changed but little since Burns 
immortalised them, and doubtless will 
long remain as mementoes of his tale. 
But it was the creation of quite a different 
century from ours. Ghaists, howlets, war- 
locks, and Auld Nick himself, have prob- 
ably long ceased to scare belated travel- 
lers, whether drunk or sober, passing the 
anciently haunted kirk. If they did still 
cherish occasional desires to renew their 
assemblies there, the tramway and the 
new railway would perhaps be sufficient 
to convince them of the discretion of 
selecting a more secluded meeting-place 
for their unholy revels. With the tramcar 
passing the ' winnock-bunker in the east,' 
and railway trains rumbling, however 
modestly, behind the building, it is no 
longer a place where such 'unco sights' 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

are to be looked for as those which en- 
riched the eyes of the heroic Tain o' 
Shanter. 

As for the village of AUoway, where the 
poet first looked upon the world, it also 
is no longer the Alloway of the poet's 
days. The old clay cottage has now no 
neighbours of a similar or a still plainer 
and more primitive aspect. When first 
erected, it was probably one of the more 
pretentious mansions of the rustic clac- 
han ; for the poet's father was a man of su- 
perior tastes, enlightenment, and aspira- 
tions to most of his neighbours, and was 
so far a man of means that he was able 
to hire seven acres of nursery ground, and 
expend the money for the^ materials, in 
addition to clay, necessary for the erection 
of his cottage. Even towards the close of 
the eighteenth century the mass of the 
common people of Scotland were housed 
in hovels no better than those yet to be 
found in some of the remoter western 
islands — round, one-roomed stone and 
turf shanties without chimneys, the smoke 
from the fire in the centre finding its exit 
merely by a hole in the apex of the roof. 
It is, indeed, a somewhat similar, though 
40 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



two-roomed, dwelling which figures in the 
Vision ; and what the poet professes there 
to describe is not a mere cotter's hut, but 
the older, though still common, farmhouse 
of the period : 
' There, lanely, by the ingle-cheek, 
I sat and ey'd the spewing reek, 
That fill'd, wi' hoast-provoking smeek, 

The auld clay biggin' ; 
An' heard the restless rattons squeak 
About the riggin'.' 
With a curious oversight in regard to 
dates, Gilbert Burns was concerned lest 
some readers might suppose that the poet 
had here in his mind AUoway cottage, 
whereas, of course, he left the cottage 
when only in his seventh year; and it 
was on an evening in his early manhood, 
after he had been tired by wielding, the 
*lee-lang day,' the 'threshers' weary 
flingin' - tree,' that he saw, by the ingle 
lowe, 

* Now bleezin' bright, 
A tight, outlandish hizzie, braw, 
Come full in sight.' 
The ' spence ' of the Vision must have been 
meant to represent that either of Lochlea 
or Mossgiel farmhouse, for he muses thus : 
41 



THE A ULD AYRSHIRE 

' Had I to guid advice but harkit, 
I might by this have led a market, 
Or strutted in a bank, and clarkit 

My cash-accovmt ; 
While here, half-mad, half-fed, half- 
sarkit. 
Is a' th' amount.' 
It is rather remarkable that Gilbert, in 
his anxiety to vindicate the taste and 
ability of his father as architect and 
builder, entirely overlooks other possi- 
bilities; and thus, while affirming that, 
as regards its application to the cottage, 
his brother's description is a mere fancy 
picture, he does not stay to consider 
whether it could in any way apply to one 
of the farmhouses. 

Here, however, is what he does say about 
the cottage — he is writing to Dr Currie : 
' That you may not think too meanly of 
this house, or of my father's taste in 
building, by supposing the poet's descrip- 
tion in the Vision (which is entirely a fancy 
picture) applicable to it, allow me to take 
notice to you, that the house consisted of 
a kitchen in one end, and a room in the 
other, with a fireplace and chimney ; that 
my father had constructed a concealed 
42 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

bed in the kitchen, with a small closet at 
the end, of the same materials with the 
house, and when altogether cast over, 
outside and in, with lime, it had a neat, 
comfortable appearance, such as no family 
of the same rank, in the present improved 
style of living, would think themselves ill 
lodged in.' 

Gilbert wrote, be it remembered, nearly 
fifty years after the cottage was erected, 
and even then he considered it quite up 
to the improved standard for the better- 
conditioned villagers. That he deemed it 
worth while to state that it actually pos- 
sessed a parlour with a fireplace and 
chimney, implies that this was not by any 
means the rule in regard to the cottages 
of the period ; and most likely it was an 
improvement on the general type in the 
clachan of AUoway. But since Gilbert 
wrote more than a century has passed, 
and the style of living amongst those in 
his father's rank in life has, at least as 
regards the character of their dwelling- 
houses, improved still further. There is, 
in fact, hardly a clay cottage now in all 
lowland Scotland ; and in Alloway — which 
has increased considerably since the poet's 
43 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

days and probably partly by reason of his 
fame — the style of architecture is consider- 
ably above the average of the Scottish vil- 
lages. As a rule Scottish villages — even 
apart from those in the mining districts, 
with their monotonous rows of shabby, 
dirty-white dwellings and hideous back 
yards — possess little of the Arcadian 
prettiness of the villages of rural Eng- 
land. The standard of comfort has greatly 
improved, but the situation is often bare 
and unsheltered, and aesthetics have usu- 
ally but small consideration, except as re- 
gards the flower beds in the well-kept 
gardens. In AUoway, however, there is 
now the intrusion, especially in the neigh- 
bourhood of the cottage, of something 
bearing at least a faint resemblance to 
the suburban villa, or an attempt to com- 
bine rural simplicity with suburban gen- 
tility ; and the entirely modern, and quite 
' superior ' aspect of the village generally, 
helps to emphasise the antique meanness 
of the excessively thatched and curiously 
small-windowed building, which is the 
sole vestige of the clachan of the poet's 
days. For nearly a century until 1881 the 
cottage enjoyed the distinction of being 
44 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

the village ' public ' ; but in that year it was 
purchased by the trustees of the Monu- 
ment, who have caused it to assume, inter- 
nally and externally, as much as possible, 
the appearance it presented when occu- 
pied by the poet's father; it may still, 
with all its needful renovations, be re- 
garded as the veritable cottage in which 
the poet was born ; and it is in reality a 
more striking and impressive memorial 
of him than the more elaborate one near 
the river. But the cottage in which Mur- 
doch held his school is no longer extant ; 
and indeed both the near and more re- 
mote neighbourhood of the poet's birth- 
place is immensely changed within the 
last century — all except Kirk Alloway, the 
Auld Brig o' Doon, the Brown Carrick 
Hill, and 'the banks and braes o' bonnie 
Doon ' ; and though they ' bloom as fresh 
and fair ' every spring and summer as they 
were wont to do, their aspect near the 
Auld Brig has, of course, been greatly 
altered by the presence of the Monument 
and the Hotel, with the ornamental 
grounds near the river. 
In its primitive rustic days, the landscape, 
except near the banks of the river, must 
45 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

have been rather bare and bleak. The road 
along which Tarn o' Shanter 

' Skelpit on thro' dub and mire ' 
was evidently no better a highway than 
the average country roads of the period, 
and most likely a mere unenclosed horse- 
track. About the period of the poet's 
childhood there were few, if any, carts in 
the agricultural districts of Ayr, luggage 
and agricultural produce being conveyed 
in sacks slung on the backs of horses ; 
but the now admirable highways in the 
neighbourhood of Alloway, shaded with 
their lines of trees, and bordered by the 
neat, highly cultivated enclosures which 
meet the eye in all directions, have com- 
pletely changed the landscape's character. 
The country in the neighbourhood of the 
cottage and the monument is now one of 
the most charming spots in Ayrshire. Its 
cultivated and wooded richness now con- 
trasts admirably with the long, heathy. 
Brown Carrick Hill, which culminates in 
an elevation of some 900 feet, and confers 
on the landscape a pleasing picturesque- 
ness, though in the time of Burns its 
grey-brown mass must have helped to 
emphasise the bleakness of what, apart 
46 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

from the wooded policies of Doonholm, 
must have been a somewhat wild and 
moorish district. 

While the hill redeems the surrounding 
country, with its gentle elevations, from 
monotony, its summit commands a strik- 
ing view of Arran, and the line of thriv- 
ing towns that border the Ayrshire coast, 
of the country northward as far as Ben 
Lomond and other dimly visible Highland 
peaks, and of the moors and valleys of 
inland Ayrshire girdled by their widely 
extended rim of lesser eminences. But, 
though the poet's eyes must have been 
attracted by the hill almost as soon as 
he began to speculate about the outside 
world, and though he is not unaccustomed 
to make passing allusions to hills in his 
poetry, there is no record of his having 
mentioned it either in verse or prose. 
Whether, in an age when scenery-hunt- 
ing had not begun to be a common diver- 
sion, he ever took the trouble to ascend 
it, there is no evidence to show; but if 
he did there is nothing to indicate that 
its magnificent prospect left any vivid 
and permanent impression on his mind, 
unless it be that to it we are indebted 
47 



ALLOWAY'S AULD HAUNTED KIRK 

From a Painting by Monro S. Orr 



' When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, 
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze ; 
Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing, 
And loud resounded mirth and dancing— 

But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd, 

Till, by the heel and hand admonish'd, 

She ventur'd forward on the light ; 

And, wow ! Tam saw an unco sight ! 

Warlocks and witches in a dance : 

Nae cotillon brent new frae France, 

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, 

Put life and mettle in their heels. 

A winnock-bunker in the east, 

There sat auld Nick in shape o' beast ; 

A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large. 

To gie them music was his charge ; 

He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl, 

Till roof and rafters a' did dirl." 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

for some of the finest stanzas in ' The 
Vision ' : 

' Here rivers in the sea were lost ; 
There mountains to the skies were 

tost : 
Here tumbling billows mark'd the 
coast 
With surging foam ; 
There distant shone Art's lof tly boast, 
The lordly dome,' etc. 
But, after all, this is hardly meant to 
represent an extended landscape picture ; 
it represents rather separate scenes, as 
well as historic and other incidents. There 
is indeed little trace in his verse of any 
interest in wide and varied prospects. In 
this respect he was characteristically a 
peasant ; his eyes were attracted mainly 
by the features of nature which were 
familiar to him in the course of his daily 
avocations ; by the ' deep green-mantled 
earth' spangled with daisies and wild 
flowers, or the yellow, ripening corn, or 
the 'lang yellow broom' or the white- 
blossomed or red -fruited hawthorn, or 
the verdant woods vocal with the songs of 
birds, or the wind whistling through the 
bared trees, or the hills white with snow, 
D 49 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

or the moors 'red -brown with heather- 
bells,' or the streams and rivers winding 
through the haughs, and especially 
' The bonnie, winding banks 
Where Doon runs, wimplin' clear.' 
On the whole, the native district of Burns, 
though bleaker, barer and wilder in much 
of its aspect than it is now, must have 
been even then a pleasant, and in parts 
beautiful, country enough, and by no 
means unfitted to nourish a poet's youth- 
ful fancies. 



Ill 

AT MOUNT OLIPHANT 

By the removal of the family, in his 
seventh year, to Mount Oliphant, the 
external surroundings of Burns were but 
little changed ; and] for two years he con- 
tinued, with his brother Gilbert, to attend 
the school of Murdoch at AUoway. Mount 
Oliphant is situated in the uplands some 
200 feet more in altitude than AUoway, 
and distant from it some two miles, the 
distance from Ayr being about four. The 
farm buildings, including the dwelling- 
house, though now somewhat antiquated, 
must have been all renewed since the 
poet's time, when doubtless they presented 
the primitive thatched appearance of the 
period — with the usual abundance of rats 
'about the riggin'.' It commands a beau- 
tiful vista towards the sea, and has also 
the further advantage, as the poet would 
count it, of proximity to the wooded 
banks and braes of the Doon. It was, how- 
ever, still farther out of the world than 
51 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

Alloway — still farther removed from the 
varied human interest of the town of 
Ayr ; and, what was more important, the 
family's removal thither definitely de- 
cided that the lot of Burns in life was to 
be that of a toiling peasant. Had he been 
born a century later this might not have 
been his fate. One so intelligent, and, 
withal, so practical-minded and aspiring, 
as his father, might have arranged for his 
apprenticeship to some kind of trade or 
commercial pursuit in Ayr ; but in the mid- 
eighteenth century there were few pro- 
mising openings for country lads in towns, 
the great wave of commercial prosperity 
which was to overspread the west of 
Scotland having, as yet, given but few 
signs of its approach. Even had his father 
continued at Alloway, Burns would have 
had hardly other prospect than that of 
becoming a ploughman : in his own words 
he would 'have been marched off to be 
one of the little underlings about a farm- 
house'; but even so, his worldly prospects 
might in the end have been better than 
they turned out to be; for though it 
was more particularly on his two sons' 
account, and that he might have them 
52 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

under his charge, that the father ven- 
tured to engage in farming, the venture, 
in the words of Gilbert, was the source 
of all the father's ' difficulties and dis- 
tresses ' ; and it was as disadvantageous 
to the sons as it was to the father. 
From the beginning William Burns suf- 
fered from a lack of capital ; and the soil 
of the farm was, according to Gilbert, 
writing in 1800, the ' very poorest ' he then 
knew ' to be in a state of cultivation ' ; 
but to understand the character of the 
family's situation the general backward 
nature of agriculture, at this period, in 
Scotland, has to be considered. Writing 
even of a later period Dr Currie remarked 
that the Scottish farmer neither vested 
the same capital in the soil as the Eng- 
lish farmer nor expected the same re- 
turn. While he is now in the van of 
British agriculturahsts he then lagged 
far behind his southern neighbour. His 
methods of cropping and manuring were 
unenlightened; and his machinery and 
implements were so primitive that hard, 
unremitting toil availed very little to 
mitigate his chronic poverty. The plough 
of the period was a huge, unwieldy, and 
53 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

yet comparatively ineffective implement, 
drawn either by a large team of oxen or 
four stout horses — as indicated by Burns 
in 'The Inventory' — and the progress of 
the one plough, which was frequently in 
difficulties, occupied the attention of all 
the men folks of the farm. In his early 
teens, the, in those days, much more tir- 
ing, if not more skilful, task of holding 
the plough was entrusted to Robert, who 
was a stout lad for his years, but whose 
young strength was severely tried and 
strained by the plough's frequent shocks 
and collisions against stones and boulders, 
and by endeavours to guide it past them, 
and up and down the irregular knolls and 
hollows. The harrows and other imple- 
ments for breaking down the land were 
equally imperfect ; and their imperfection 
rendered the task of preparation for the 
seed much more tedious and prolonged 
than it is now — even had the Burns family 
not been, as they always were, somewhat 
shorthanded. Similarly, in harvest-time, 
the work of securing the ripening grain 
before its destruction by storms necessi- 
tated then more prolonged, unremitting 
toil on the part of reapers, for the 
54 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

process of shearing by the hook was a 
slow one, unless the company of reapers 
was a good deal more numerous than 
William Burns could afford it to be ; while 
in winter, instead of the threshing-mill 
doing the work of severing the grain 
from the stalk, all had to come under the 
' threshers' weary flingin'-tree.' 
This was the round of toil which young 
Burns was soon called upon to enter on 
at Mount Oliphant — doing, on account of 
his father's failing strength and extreme 
poverty, the work of a grown man while 
still in his early teens. Hard though it 
was, he, in his early youth, in a manner 
enjoyed it, for in his ' Epistle to the Guid- 
wif e of Wauchope House ' he writes of it 
thus: 

'When I was beardless, young and 
blate, 
An' first could thresh the barn. 
Or baud a yokin' at the pleugh. 
An', though f orf oughten sair eneugh. 

Yet unco proud to learn ; 
When first among the yellow corn 

A man I reckoned was. 
An' wi' the lave ilk merry morn 
Could rank my rig and lass ; 
55 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

Still shearing and clearing 
The tither stooked raw ; 

Wi' clavers and havers 

Wearing the day awa',' etc. 
This is the picture of a quite happy youth- 
time ; but, full of vim and sociality though 
he vi^as, the continuous and premature toil 
to which he was subjected gradually told 
on his health and spirits. Had it really 
assisted his father to success as a farmer 
this would have been a mitigation; had 
any prospect of real reward presented 
itself to the family for their hardships, 
they could have been faced with a certain 
content ; but the task which engaged con- 
tinuously their whole care and energies 
was a merely hopeless one; 'the farm,' 
as he says, 'proved a ruinous bargain'; 
and when, after the death of his father's 
old master, the laird of Doonholm, they 
'fell into the hands of a pitiless factor,' 
they necessarily began to deem their con- 
dition little better than that of galley 
slaves. 'A novel-writer,' Burns remarks, 
' might perhaps have viewed these scenes 
with some satisfaction, but so did not I ; 
my indignation yet boils at the recollec- 
tion of the scoundrel factor's insolent, 
56 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

threatening letters, which used to set us 
all in tears.' They were, indeed, a model 
peasant family in their loyalty to one 
another, in their diligence, in their intel- 
ligent desire after self-improvement, in 
their frugal simplicity, in their Spartan 
endurance ; but the happiness of their 
Ayrshire Arcadia was fatally marred by 
their hopeless poverty : 
' Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 

How they maun thole a factor's snash : 

He'll stamp an' threaten, curse, an' 
swear. 

He'll apprehend them, poind their gear ; 

While they maun staun', wi' aspect 
humble, 

An' hear it a', an' fear an' tremble ! 

I see how folk live that hae riches ; 

But surely poor folk maun be wretches ! ' 
During the Mount Oliphant period of the 
poet's life there are few outstanding in- 
cidents, and comparatively little is known 
of his association with personalities and 
places in the neighbourhood. It was mainly 
the hobble-de-hoy time of his life ; and for 
a considerable portion of it ' no solitaire,' 
so he affirms, 'was less acquainted with 
the ways of the world,' though no peasant 
57 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

solitaii'e was so eager to know all that 
was to be known of the world, whether 
through personal observation or by per- 
usal of the thoughts and observations of 
others. Books were, indeed, the chief com- 
pany, and the chief recreation, of this re- 
markable family of peasant toilers. They 
kept themselves very much to themselves, 
partly because they had little or no oppor- 
tunity of doing anything else. 'Nothing,' 
writes Gilbert, ' could be more retired than 
our general manner of living at Mount 
Oliphant ; we rarely saw anybody but the 
members of our own family. There were 
no boys of our own age, or near it, in the 
neighbourhood. Indeed, the greater part 
of the land in the vicinity was at that 
time possessed by shopkeepers and people 
of that stamp, who had retired from busi- 
ness, or who kept their farm in the country, 
at the same time that they followed busi- 
ness in town.' 

As Mount Oliphant is in Ayr parish, and 
the father had a special favour for the 
prelections of Dalrymple, one of the Ayr 
ministers, the family most probably did 
not sever their connection with the church 
in Ayr, and thus had fewer opportunities 
58 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

than otherwise they would have had of 
making acquaintance with the families in 
the Dalrymple parish ; for the Kirk then, 
as indeed it is partly still, was the great 
social rendezvous of the country people. 
On set occasions the curiosity of young 
Burns may have led him to pay a visit to 
Dalrymple parish church, but the identical 
building he may have sat in no longer 
exists, the church having been entirely 
rebuilt since his days. The old parish 
school— situated at St Valley — which for 
a short time he attended, has also quite 
disappeared, though it has a successor in 
a flourishing Board School. Indeed, within 
the last century the landmarks of the dis- 
trict have completely changed. There is 
now no hamlet at Perclewan,at the smithy 
of which Burns got his horse shod by the 
great-grandfather of Principal Candlish, 
the father of the future Free Church. The 
blacksmith, like many of his craft in Scot- 
land, was intelligent above the average of 
his neighbours ; he had, apparently, talks 
with the youth about other matters than 
horses or farming. Most probably they 
discussed together the deeds of the old 
historic heroes of the district, for it was 
59 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

from the blacksmith that he got a copy 
of one of the first two books he ' ever read 
in private,' — the ' History of Sir William 
Wallace,' in the modern Scots version of 
Hamilton of Gilbertfield, the reading of 
which, he says, 'poured a Scottish pre- 
judice into my veins, which will boil along 
there till the floodgates of life shut in 
eternal rest.' 

It was probably while attending Dal- 
rymple parish school that Burns first 
made the acquaintance of the blacksmith's 
aspiring son, James Candlish, who became 
a lecturer of medicine in Edinburgh ; but 
he must, of course, have often met him at 
the smithy, and they probably renewed 
acquaintance afterwards at Mauchline, 
for Candlish married one of the ' Mauch- 
line belles,' the 'witty' Miss Smith. In a 
letter to Candlish from Edinburgh, in 
March 1787, Burns remarked : ' I am stiU, 
in the Apostle Paul's phrase, " the old man 
with his deeds," as when we were sporting 
about the lady-thorn.' The reference can- 
not be identified — some have conjectured 
that it may apply to a locality near the 
school called ' the Lady-thorn,' the scene 
of their sports when boys ; but the phrase 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

' the old man with his deeds ' suggests a 
possible allusion to the love frolics of their 
early manhood, near some trysting thorn, 
either at Perclewan or elsewhere. 
Besides his errands to the Perclewan 
smithy, Burns had occasion often to visit 
the mill of Allan Kilpatrick, with whom 
the father seems to have been on speci- 
ally friendly terms, for Kilpatrick' s young 
daughter was engaged one year as one of 
the harvesters at Mount Oliphant. She 
was the 'handsome Nell,' whose sweet 
singing, good looks, and winning ways 
first initiated Burns into 'the passion of 
love,' and first inspired him to ' tune his 
rustic lyre.' 

How far he extended his rambles into 
the surrounding country we have no de- 
finite information. His period of miscel- 
laneous roving had not then begun; but 
in his journey to and from Kirkoswald 
in his seventeenth year, he had occasion 
to pass through a district of great tradi- 
tional and historic interest. His familiar- 
ity with the fairy-haunted mounds, the 
Cassilis Downans, is indicated in the intro- 
ductory stanza of ' Halloween,' which also 
embodies a reminiscence of the scenery 
61 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

round Culzean Castle, on the Carrick 
shore to the north of Kirkoswald: 
' Upon that night, when fairies light 
On Cassilis Downans dance, 
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze. 

On sprightly coursers prance ; 
Or for Colean the route is taen, 

Beneath the moon's pale beams ; 
There, up the Cove, to stray and rove, 
Among the rocks and streams 
To sport that night.' 
Whatever special memories were asso- 
ciated with the Halloween described by 
Burns, to whatever extent the incidents 
narrated and the characters depicted were 
founded on fact, the scene of the sports 
was evidently intended to be Mount Oli- 
phant, or some neighbouring farm : 
' Among the bonny winding banks, 

Where Doon rins, wimplin' clear ; 
Where Bruce ance ruled the martial 
ranks. 
An' shook his Carrick spear ; 
Some merry, friendly, country-folks 

Together did convene 
To burn their nits, an' pou their stocks, 
An' baud their Halloween 

Fu' blithe that night.' 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

While acquainted with fairy traditions 
of OassiUs he must also have been familiar 
with the tragic story of the erring Coun- 
tess of Cassilis, who was the heroine of 
the ballad of Johnny Faa; though in- 
stead of an amorous countess he makes 
an amorous Earl of Cassilis the subject 
of a lyric : 
' My Lord a-hunting he is gane, 

But hounds or hawks wi' him are nane ; 

By Colin's cottage lies his game, 

If Colin's Jenny be at hame. 

My Lady's white, my lady's red. 

And kith and kin o' Cassilis blude ; 

But her ten-pund lands o' tocher gude 

Were a' the charms his lordship lo'ed.' 
The tragedy associated with the Castle 
of Auchindrane — now obliterated by a 
new building — in which another Earl of 
Cassilis, as well as his friend the Laird 
of Culzean was involved, Culzean as a 
preliminary victim, must have had its 
effect on his young imagination ; and the 
historic memories associated with the dis- 
trict, from the days of Bruce and earher 
to the times of the Covenanters, doubtless 
helped to colour his peculiar Scottish 
patriotism. 

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THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

With Maybole the capital of Carrick he ac- 
quired special familiarity from visiting it 
along with William Niven a native of the 
place, and nephew of the farmer of Bal- 
lochniel, with whom Burns stayed while 
at Kirkoswald. His acquaintanceship was 
continued after his removal to Lochlea 
and Mossgiel ; and when he was about to 
issue his poems he paid a visit to Maybole 
to obtain subscriptions, when he was in- 
troduced by Niven, whose father was a 
bailie of the town, to certain of the more 
intelligent natives, including the school- 
master. At a merry meeting in the King's 
Arms, it would appear, from a letter of 
Burns, that the poet was induced to fav- 
our those assembled in his honour with 
recitations of some of his more humorous 
verses. This, he was afraid, might after- 
wards make them see him in a light 
he did not deserve, that seemingly of a 
somewhat vain young man; and indeed 
modesty as to his own poetic merits was 
a more prominent characteristic of Burns 
than vanity. Vanity rather than modesty 
seems, however, to have been the special 
weakness of Niven, who got to persuade 
himself that 'The Epistle to a Young 
£ 65 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

Friend ' was originally addressed to him, 
and not as Burns in the published volume 
professed, to the son of Robert Aiken. He 
was thus quite oblivious of the possibility 
that, since he was much the same age as 
the poet, to bombard him with such ad- 
vice as that contained in the ' Epistle,' 
might imply that he was an exceptionally 
weak young man, 'dear amiable youth' 
though he may have been. 
The poet's visit to Kirkoswald must have 
been one of the most pleasant episodes of 
the Mount Oliphant period. For genera- 
tions the parish had included the homes 
of the poet's maternal ancestors, the 
names of many of whom are inscribed on 
a tombstone in the churchyard surround- 
ing the ancient ruined church, which in 
olden times was of special account by 
reason of its relation to the Abbey of 
Crossraguel in the neighbourhood, partly 
destroyed by the Protestants of the west 
in 1561, but still a well-preserved ruin. 
The walls of the church once echoed to 
the thunders of Knox when denouncing 
a work on the Mass by Abbot Quentin 
Kennedy, with whom Knox had also a 
disputation at Maybole in September 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

1562, which lasted three days. The school 
where Burns prosecuted his studies in 
mensuration was a small apartment in a 
cottage opposite the churchyard, whither 
it had been lately removed from a ruinous 
building in the east end of the old church. 
He resided at some distance from the 
village, with his maternal uncle, Samuel 
Brown, who lodged at the farm of Bal- 
lochniel; but being removed from the 
rigid and exacting control of his father, 
he felt himself, for the first time of his 
life, pretty much his own master and 
guardian; and, according to his own ac- 
count, though he made pretty good pro- 
gress in his studies, he made still greater 
progress in his 'knowledge of mankind.' 
The scenes ' of swaggering riot and roar- 
ing dissipation,' which were the inevitable 
interludes of the contraband trade, were 
observed by him with that critical and 
keenly humorous interest in the more 
squalidly, eccentric freaks of human 
nature, which is responsible for some 
of his most realistic and striking verse ; 
and while he thus learned, as he tells 
us, to 'move without fear in a drunken 
squabble,' he also made progress towards 
67 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

the acquirement of the ease and freedom 
of address, which latterly enabled him 
to place himself on a footing of social 
cordiality with even the more regardless 
members of the community. 
So much for the sordid side of his Kirk- 
oswald surroundings. How much his 
more sentimental experiences there really 
meant for him, it is hard to say; but 
two kailyards of the village — that of the 
schoolhouse and that of the neighbour- 
ing cottage — were the scene of the inaug- 
uration of a love idyll, which was perhaps 
the first one of his real manhood, and 
therefore for the time being of a peculi- 
arly absorbing character. According to 
his own version of the affair, while busily 
engaged in taking the sun's altitude, his 
attention was suddenly distracted by the 
vision of what he, in his somewhat un- 
pleasantly affected French fashion, terms 
a 'charming filette,' the daughter of a 
neighbouring cottager, whom he poetic- 
ally represents as like 

* Proserpine, gathering flowers, 
Herself a fairer flower.' 
But his eyes most likely were occupied 
m.ore with the 'fairer flower' than the 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

vegetables which he supposes her to have 
been plucking. Whether he asked her for 
a posy he neglects to mention ; but we 
must suppose he accosted her in a suffici- 
ently fascinating manner ; for they were 
immediately on terms of evening walks 
and mutual vows, while for the poet him- 
self it was a case even of ' sleepless nights/ 
during the short week that remained of 
his stay at Kirkoswald. 'We'll gently 
walk,' so he represents himself as address- 
ing her in a ' Song, composed in August ' 
— evidently however not written then 
and there but in mere commemoration 
of the episode : 
' We'll gently walk, and sweetly talk, 

While the silent moon shines clearly ; 
I'll clasp thy waist and, fondly prest. 

Swear how I lo'e thee dearly.' 
Burns was yet to clasp many waists be- 
sides that of Peggy Thomson, and swear 
of his love in equally ardent terms to 
their owners; but if love between him 
and Peggy soon died out, sincere affec- 
tion and respect seemed, in the case of 
both, to have survived; and when, after 
she was the wife of another, he took fare- 
well of her with the intention of proceed- 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

ing to the Indies, he reports that both he 
and she were so moved that neither could 
speak. But the main influence of the epi- 
sode was that on his general habits. 
Being now initiated into the fascination 
of gently walking and sweetly talking in 
moonlight nights, he, not long afterwards 
— if not, as he represents, immediately on 
returning home — resolved, 'in order,' as 
he puts it, ' to give ' his ' manners a brush,' 
to attend a country dancing school; and 
having thus begun his career as a rural 
Lothario, he was continually finding new 
incentives and subjects for the cultivation 
of his lyric muse. 

In other respects his Kirkoswald visit was 
fruitful of influences, which left certain 
permanent impressions. The ancient as- 
sociations of the district with the heroic 
Bruce, who was Earl of Carrick and Lord 
of Turnberry Castle, helped to fan the 
flame of patriotic enthusiasm which 
glows in so much of his verse ; and there 
are further definite traces of the memory 
of his visit in two of the greatest of his 
poems, ' Halloween ' — as we have already 
seen— and • Tam o' Shanter.' Here he is 
supposed to have made acquaintance with 
70 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

the prototypes — Douglas Graham and 
John Davidson, whose graves are in 
the Kirkoswald churchyard — of the im- 
mortal ' drouthie cronies,' 'Tam o' Shanter' 
arid ' Souter Johnnie ' ; and it is even as- 
serted that he once heard from the lips 
of Graham's wife, Helen M'Taggart, the 
substantial denunciations of her absent 
husband which are set forth with such 
glowing rhetorical art in the poem ; while 
the village inn beside the church is iden- 
tified as the 'Lord's House,' where Kate 
[Helen's prototype]— untruthfully, accord- 
ing to the traditionary reputation of the 
inn and its very circumspect hostess— in 
her denunciations represents her husband 
as drinking on Sunday, 

' With Kirkton Jean till Monday.' 
But for the increased signs of prosperity 
and comfort amongst the inhabitants of 
this remote agricultural seaboard parish, 
and the absence of the smuggling excite- 
ments with the accompanying scenes of 
' swaggering riot and roaring dissipation,' 
the district until lately must have differed 
but little in character from what it was 
when Burns and Peggy Thomson strayed 
there in moonlight evenings to view 
71 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

' the charms of nature, 
The rustling corn, the fruited thorn, 
And ilka happy creature.' 
Now, however, the railway whistle has 
begun to arouse the echoes of the Carrick 
shore; the 'fore' of the golfer has, for 
some time, been heard in the land ; and at 
Turnberry, hallowed by its memories of 
Bruce, the inevitable hotel, ' commanding ' 
— in the words of a newspaper enthusiast 
— 'a panoramic view of the great high- 
way of the seas,' etc., in spick and span 
splendour now fronts the western Carrick 
horizon ; and the villa of the speculative 
builder will doubtless soon be an appreci- 
able feature of the landscap^e, and more 
and more combine its neat, artificial pret- 
tiness with the more rustic and ancient 
charms of the 'rustling corn' and 'the 
fruited thorn.' 



IV 

LOCHLEA AND TARBOLTON, ETC. 

In 1777 William Burns reached a break 
in his lease at Mount Oliphant; and on 
Whitsunday of that year removed to 
Lochlea in the parish of Tarbolton. From 
Tarbolton, Lochlea is some two and a half 
milesdistant by the higher of the two roads 
to Mauchline. On leaving the village, we 
pass round an eminence — the hill of Baal's 
fire, according to the traditional origin 
of the word Tarbolton — and then descend 
toward's 'Willie's Mill' as described in 
' Death and Doctor Hornbook ' : 

' I was come round about the hill, 

An' todlin' down on Willie's mill, 
Setting my staff wi' a' my skill, 
To keep me sicker.' 
The Cumnock hills over which the ' moon 
began to gloure ' faced Burns dimly in the 
far distance. The mill, now a rather dil- 
apidated range of whitewashed buildings, 
lies in the valley, and is passed on the 
right just before we cross the small but 
73 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

classic Fail, associated in an early rhyme 
with the ' berry-brown ale ' of an ancient 
friary destroyed, as recorded by Knox, 
by the Protestants of the west in 1561. 
The place which the dreadful Something 
selected for the interview was not a parti- 
cularly uncanny-looking spot, but it was 
the most uncanny part of the way be- 
tween Tarbolton and Lochlea. The way- 
farer was in, or nearing, the gloom of the 
valley, which he would soon leave for the 
bare, exposed hillside, and probably the 
road was slightly shaded, as it now is near 
the bridge, by trees, though even the oldest 
of them now standing could hardly have 
been there when Burns passed that way. 
As was to be expected, the stone on which 
they took a seat is ' still pointed out,' 
though for Burns himself to have pointed 
it out would really have been carrying the 
joke too far. It is just as likely as not that 
after one of his trying descents he took 
a seat on the coping of the bridge, whether 
he there foregathered or not with any 
earthly or unearthly companion. The 
' auld kirk-hammer ' that then 
' strak the bell 
Some wee short hour ayont the twel ' 
74 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

has long ceased to announce the hours of 
the day and night, the church having been 
rebuilt in 1821, when a new clock was in- 
serted in the tower of the new spire. The 
kirk stands high at the north-eastern end 
of the village, and the striking of the 
clock in the silence of the night would be 
heard with quite startling clearness by the 
two gossips in the valley below. 
From Willie's mill the Mauchline road 
winds gradually up the hillsides, which 
are now covered by well-cultivated fields 
separated by trim hedgerows, and dotted 
here and there by whitewashed farm 
buildings, with their clumps of trees re- 
newed probably from time immemorial. 
Even in its summer greenness the country 
has a somewhat bare and bleak aspect, 
and this characteristic is emphasised 
rather than not by the few strips of 
rugged plantation here and there visible 
on the hillsides, and the distant woods in 
the river haughs. In its winter bareness 
it must be a ' bleaky ' country indeed. The 
main compensation is the extensive view 
in all directions, which though hardly 
beautiful or picturesque, except towards 
the sea, with Arran and other islands in 
75 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

the far distance, conveys an exhilarat- 
ing sense of freedom and expansion, and 
doubtless had its own effect in encourag- 
ing the poet's day-dreams of human liberty 
and brotherhood. 

Lochlea is not visible from the Mauchline 
road until you attain the hill beyond the 
country road on the left, that leads up to 
the farm, which is the second on the left. 
It is situated in a slight hollow, but with 
a pretty open exposure to the winds that 
'aff Ben Lomond blaw,' though not so 
much so as Mossgiel. The farmhouse and 
steading have, of course, been renewed 
since the time of Burns, and the imme- 
diate surroundings have doubtless been a 
good deal changed. The loch from which 
the farm takes its name, and which was 
originally formed to feed one of the old 
grinding-mills, has now been drained ; but 
some strips of plantation to the north- 
east may occupy the position of those, 
though the trees must have been renewed, 
by the sheltered side of which Burns de- 
lighted to walk. 'There is scarcely any 
earthly object,' he wrote, ' gives me more 
— I do not know if I should call it pleasure, 
but something which exults me, some- 
76 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

thing which enraptures me — than to walk 
in the sheltered side of a wood or high 
plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and 
hear a stormy wind howling among the 
trees and raving o'er the plain. It is my 
best season for devotion ; my mind is rapt 
in a kind of enthusiasm to Him who, in the 
pompous language of Scripture, "walks 
upon the wings of the wind." In one of 
these seasons, just before a trade misfor- 
tune, I composed the following song : — 
" The wintry west extends its blast. 

And hail and rain does blaw, 
Or the stormy north sends driving forth 

The blinding sleet and snaw : 
While tumbling brown, the burn comes 
down. 

And roars f rae bank and brae ; 
And bird and beast in covert rest. 

And pass the heartless day." ' 
AtLochlea, which was some ten milesfrom 
Mount Oliphant, the family were more 
remote from the world as represented to 
them by the county town of Ayr, their 
nearest town being now Kilmarnock, some 
seven miles distant. They were dependent 
for social intercourse on an almost en- 
tirely new circle of acquaintances, who 
77 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

were nearly all primitively rustic, but 
much more accessible to intercourse than 
those adjoining Mount Oliphant. In ad- 
dition to this, the social instincts of Robert 
and the elder children were more eager 
for gratification. It is matter of dispute 
whether the dancing school Robert first 
attended was near Mount Oliphant or 
near Lochlea; but if he did attend one 
when at Mount Oliphant, his manners 
would already have got that 'brush' 
which he deemed needful in one aspiring 
to be a rustic gallant. The father, the su- 
perior of most of his neighbours in ability 
and intelligence, was naturally reserved 
except in very congenial society. Probably 
he never lost the hard and brusque style 
of address, peculiar to his native region ; 
and his wearing struggle with misfor- 
tunes had now begun severely to affect his 
health and spirits; but the mother, the 
daughter of a Carrick farmer, would feel 
herself quite at home amongst her rural 
Ayrshire neighbours; and the son with 
his Kirkoswald experience had already, 
when they removed to Lochlea, made 
considerable progress in the social facil- 
ity, which made him a welcome guest 
78 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

wherever 'two or three were met to- 
gether.' 

The grave Gilbert, modelled very much 
after his father, remarks that the Lochlea 
period of the poet's life was not marked 
by miuch literary improvemient. This is 
hardly true, for it was while at Lochlea 
that his poetic genius first gave indica- 
tions of the great qualities which were 
to captivate the world. But evidently 
his leisure hours were not so wholly de- 
voted to the study of books as of old ; and 
Gilbert is doubtless substantially correct 
when he goes on to say : ' But during this 
time the foundation was laid of certain 
habits in my brother's character, which 
afterwards became but too prominent, 
and which malice and envy have taken 
delight to enlarge on. Though, when 
young, he was bashful and awkward in 
his intercourse with women, yet when he 
approached manhood, his attachment to 
their society became very strong, and he 
was constantly the victim of some fair 
enslaver. The symptoms of his passion 
were often such as nearly to equal those 
of the celebrated Sappho. . . . He had 
always a particular jealousy of people 
79 



THE AULD BRIG O' DOON 

From a Painting by Monro S. Orr 



' Sweet are the banks, the banks o' Doon, 

The spreading floivers are fair, 
And everything is blythe and glad, 

But I am fu' o' care. 
Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird. 

That sings upon the bough ! 
Thou minds me o' the happy days 

When my fause Luve was true. 

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird. 
That sings beside thy mate, 

For sae I sat, and sae I sang, 
And wist na o' my fate ! 

Aft hae I rov'd by bonie Doon, 

To see the woodbine twine. 
And ilka bird sang o' its luve, 

And sae did I o' mine. 
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose 

Upon its thorny tree, 
But my fause lover staw my rose 

And left the thorn wi' me.' 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

who were richer than himself, or who 
had more consequence in life. His love, 
therefore, rarely settled on persons of this 
description. When he selected anyone out 
of the sovereignty of his good pleasure to 
whom he should pay his particular atten- 
tion, she was instantly invested with a suf- 
ficient stock of charms out of the plentiful 
stores of his own imagination ; and there 
was often a great disparity between hisfair 
captivator and her attributes. One gener- 
ally reigned paramount in his affections ; 
but . . . Robert was frequently encoun- 
tering other attractions, which found so 
many under-plots in the drama of his love.' 
Gilbert's account of the general qualities 
of his brother's fair captivators tends to 
do away with any special interest that 
might attach to the names of those that 
are known to have attracted his passing 
fancy. They had apparently no particu- 
lar claims to admiration beyond those of 
the average comely young woman ; and 
Gilbert mentions none of them as ' excel- 
ling ' in personal charms. For the critical 
observations of Robert on some, and his 
lyric raptures about others, the reader 
may refer to such verses as 'The Tarbolton 
F 81 



T H§E AULD AYRSHIRE 

Lasses,' ' The Ronals of the Bennals,' ' The 
Rigs of Barley,' 'Montgomery's Peggy,' 
' Tibbie, I hae seen the day,' ' And I'll kiss 
thee yet,' 'Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs,' 
and * My Nannie, O '. Apparently he soon 
got on terms of easy familiarity, and 
something more, with most of the rustic 
beauties of his neighbourhood; and the 
circle of his roving acquaintance with the 
fair sex gradually assumed a pretty wide 
circumference. As he himself puts it : 
' When first I came to Stewart Kyle 

My mind it wasna steady ; 
Where e'er I gaed, where e'er I rade, 
A mistress still I had ay.' 
His chief associates at this^ period, both 
men and women, were simple, unsophisti- 
cated rustics, whose methods of social 
intercourse and enjoyment were formed 
on very primitive models. Love-making 
and flirtation were pursued by him mainly 
after the clandestine fashion celebrated in 
many traditional ballads having refer- 
ence to the secret opening of doors and 
windows ; and when he was not principal 
in an affair of this kind he was quite 
ready to act as assistant. ' A country lad, 
he tells us, 'seldom carries on an amour 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



without an assistant confidant. I possessed 
a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity in 
these matters, which recommended me as 
a proper second in duels of that kind ; and 
I daresay I felt as much pleasure at being 
in the secrets of half the amours of the 
parish, as ever did Premier at knowing 
the intrigues of half of the courts of 
Europe.' *To the sons and daughters of 
toil these amours,' he adds, ' are matters 
of the most serious nature; to them the 
ardent hope, the stolen interview, the 
tender farewell are the greatest and most 
delicious parts of their enjoyment.' 
For miscellaneous social intercourse there 
were the foregatherings at the kirk be- 
fore the services, and at the inns, or else- 
where, between them; and, as now, the 
gudemen had the week-day diversions 
of roups, fairs, markets, and other agri- 
cultural functions. For social amusements 
the young folks had their dancing schools, 
taught by itinerant professors of the terp- 
sichorean art, either in a village school- 
room or farm barn. Dancing, from time 
immemorial, was a favourite pastime of 
the Scottish peasants, and formed an im- 
portant part of the programme at such 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 



merry meetings as Christenings, Harvest 
Homes, and Penny Weddings, or at the 
diversions associated with Fasten E'en, 
Halloween, and other traditional feast- 
days. Of the rustic young folks, as they 
appeared at these gatherings, we have a 
charming description in * Halloween ' : 
• The lasses feat, an' cleanly neat, 

Mair braw than when they're fine ; 
Their faces blythe, fu' sweetly kythe 

Hearts leal, an' warm, an' kin': 
The lads sae trig, wi' wooer-babs 
Weel-knotted on their garten. 
Some unco blate, an' some wi' gabs. 
Gar lasses' hearts gang startin' 
Whyles fast at night.' 
While the diversions of Halloween — a 
night on which the fairies were supposed 
to hold a general anniversary — had rela- 
tion mainly to 'charms and spells' 'big 
with prophecy' to those who ventured to 
put their fortune to their test, the most 
common amusements of the social gather- 
ings were music, dancing, and certain rude, 
rustic dramas, reminiscences, perhaps, of 
more elaborate performances of the olden 
time. A very common social function was 
what was termed a 'Rocking,' as chron- 
84 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

icled by Burns in one of his 'Epistles to 
Lapraik ' : 

* On Fasten-e'en we had a rockin', 
To ea' the crack an' weave our stockin' ; 
And there was muckle fun and jokin', 

Ye needna doubt ; 
At length we had a hearty yokin' 
At " sang about." ' 
At a Rocking industry was combined with 
amusement. The origin of the custom was 
the gathering of young women to assist 
one of the neighbours in spinning wool. 
But whither young women assembled, 
swains were sure to be attracted; and 
most commonly each young woman had 
an attendant follower, who deemed it a 
special favour to be allowed to carry her 
spinning implements going and returning. 
Thus Burns in ' Duncan Davison ' : 
' There was a lass, they ca'd her Meg, 

And she held o'er the moors to spin ; 
There was a lad that followed her. 
They ca'd him Duncan Davison. 
The moor was dreigh,and Megwasskeigh; 

Her favour Duncan couldna win, 
For with the rock she wad him knock, 

And aye she shook the temper pin,' etc. 
The labours of the industrious young 
85 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 



women were lightened by song and story ; 
and the Burns' account of the termination 
of a Halloween evening would doubtless 
apply to a ' Rocking ' : 
' Wi' merry sangs, an' friendly cracks, 

I wat they didna weary ; 
And unco tales, and funny jokes. 

Their sports were cheap an' cheery : 
Till buttered sow'ns, wi' fragrant lunt, 

Set a' their gabs a-steerin' ; 
Syne, wi' a social glass o' strunt, 
They started aff careerin' 

Fu' blythe that night.' 
Of the acquaintanceship of Burns with 
the farmers and farmers' sons we have 
but scant information of a definite kind, 
though from his being in the secret of 
most of the love affairs of the district we 
must infer that he was on pretty friendly 
terms with a considerable number of 
young men as well as young women. We 
have his own testimony that his conversa- 
tional powers — which he connects with ' a 
certain wild logical talent and a strength 
of thought something resembling the rudi- 
ments of good sense' — made him a wel- 
come guest in the rude, bucolic companies 
at farm ingles and village publics. In this 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

he is corroborated by his friend, David 
Sillar, who, however, adds that while his 
'satirical seasoning' often 'set the table 
in a roar,' the mirth in the case of some 
was not unaccompanied by ' suspicious 
fear.' The fact was that Burns could hardly 
refrain, with all his love of good fellow- 
ship, from secretly despising his company; 
and it was only with a select associate 
that he could converse in other than very 
superficial terms, even if he found a few 
who so far appealed to certain qualities 
of his mind and character. 
Among his more kindred spirits was the 
clever, if too broadly humorous, farmer, 
'rough, rude, ready-witted Rankine' of 
Adamhill, who, however, was so much 
older than Burns as to have a daughter 
Anne who claimed to be the heroine of 
'Corn Rigs.' On William Muir of Tar- 
bolton Mill, still more his senior, Burns 
wrote an epitaph the heading of which in 
his First Common-Place Book, describes 
him as 'my own friend and my father's 
friend,' while in the epitaph he refers to 
him thus : 

' The friend of man, the friend of truth. 
The friend of age, and guide of youth, 
87 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

Few hearts, like his, with virtue warm'd, 
Few heads with knowledge so informed.' 
The sincerity of Muir's and his wife's 
friendship to Burns was manifested when 
they gave shelter to Jean Armour for a 
time, on her expulsion from her father's 
house ; and it is as likely as not that the 
advice of ' the guide of youth ' had some- 
thing to do with the resolution of Burns 
to marry her. In any case it is evident 
that the Burns and Muir households got 
to be on terms of very especial intimacy. 
Among the more intelligent of the far- 
mers' sons the gifts and acquirements 
of their new acquaintance must have 
awakened considerable adndiration; and 
it was probably mainly at his instigation 
and for the sake of his company that a 
few of them in 1780 resolved to form the 
Bachelor's Club, which met in a public- 
house at Tarbolton, Burns himself being 
chosen the first president. It was a kind 
of debating club, but devoted also to 
' mirth and diversion,' within the * bounds 
of innocence and decorum.' One of the 
rules was: 'Every man proper for a mem.- 
ber of this society must have a frank, 
open, honest heart; above everything 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



dirty or mean ; and must be a professed 
lover of one or more of the female sex,' etc. 
In an account of the Club, engrossed in its 
Book, we are further informed that they 
held a ball ' in honour of our society,' on 
a race night in July 1782, each member 
bringing with him a partner, when they 
' spent the evening in such innocence and 
merriment, such cheerfulness and good 
humour, that every brother will long re- 
member it with pleasure and delight.' 
In the rules and proceedings of the Club 
there is an engaging Arcadian simplicity 
that disarms criticism. But apart from the 
enlivening wit of Burns himself the de- 
bates were most probably rather dreary, 
and the oratory of a very homespun 
character. Most likely Burns lost his 
interest in the meetings as his powers 
began to ripen and his circle of acquaint- 
ances became more varied. The club ulti- 
mately numbered about a dozen, but the 
only member besides Robert and Gilbert 
Burns to whom any interest attaches is 
David Sillar, son of the farmer of Spittle- 
side. Sillar had some talent; but his as- 
sociation with Burns led him to cherish 
poetic ambitions, which were not conson- 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

ant with the character of his abilities, 
although he died a more prosperous man 
than his brother poet and fiddler. Not- 
withstanding the flattering injunction of 
Robert to Davie to 'hand to the muse,' 
Robert had probably a pretty shrewd 
estimate of Davie's poetic effusions, which 
display not the faintest touch of genius, 
and only very moderate rhyming skill. 
Sillar's main claim to remembrance is 
that he evoked from the greater poet 
such excellently rhymed ' wise saws and 
modern instances' as those to be found 
in ' The First Epistle to Davie.' 
At the time of the formation of the Club 
Burns suggested that its membership 
should be confined to country lads, the 
village young men being, in his opinion, 
too glibly confident; but gradually he 
was as much 'Hail fellow well met' 
with the young men of the village as 
with their rural brethren. Tarbolton was 
then a thriving enough village, depend- 
ent mainly on weaving, but having also 
a considerable country connection as re- 
gards shopping, etc., while its annual 
June fair was one of the most noted 
saturnalias in Ayrshire. Now, however, 
90 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



signs of dilapidation and decay are but 
too manifest. The weaving trade is well- 
nigh extinct ; and the village being about 
a uiile and a half from its so-called rail- 
way station, modern facilities of com- 
munication have done nothing to better 
its fortunes. Though not far removed 
from seats of busy industry, the tide of 
modern prosperity has failed to reach it ; 
and it now presents very much the hope- 
less look of one of the smaller towns in 
the west of Ireland. The only difference 
is the evidence of a certain struggle 
against its evil fortunes. It is, as Burns 
wrote of the Auld Brig of Ayr, ' teughly 
doure,' but time is nevertheless telling 
sadly upon it. Though several compara- 
tively modern houses testify to the pre- 
sence of some kind of faith in a better 
future for it, the efforts to renovate and 
supersede the old thatched houses are 
becoming fewer, year by year; and the 
best days of the ancient village are evi- 
dently now past. Its long and miserable- 
looking main street would in the time of 
Burns be lined mainly by low, thatched 
cottages, interspersed by only a few two- 
storey buildings; but while there would 
91 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

be much that to modern eyes would be 
suggestive both of indigence and squalor, 
there would be no symptoms of hopeless 
decay; no roofless walls and boarded-up 
windows would break the old, mean mono- 
tony of the street architecture. 
But the fact that the full tide of modern 
prosperity has not reached the village 
has assisted in preserving the memorials 
of its connection with Burns. If there are 
few houses which present a quite similar 
aspect to that which they did in his days, 
the veritable old walls of some of them 
still remain. The identical upper room in 
which the Bachelor's Club assembled is 
still in existence, though the house is no 
longer a public. A clubman of such sobriety 
that he did not spend more than three- 
pence a night in drink would hardly now 
be welcome in a public-house ; but in those 
days many publics were merely ale-houses 
frequented by very frugal customers. 
At the same time, the Bachelor's Club was 
evidently intended to be an exceptionally 
exemplary and sober institution. For some 
centuries drinking had been the main di- 
version of even the more reputable Scot ; 
and towards the close of the eighteenth 
92 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

century the bibulous habits of the people 
were reaching their acme. Amongst those 
who could afford it, and even among those 
who couldn't, drinking, on social occa- 
sions, to excess, was more the rule than 
the exception. That it happened to be so 
at this time amongst the Freemasons is 
not therefore to be imputed for sin to 
Freemasonry ; it merely meant that Free- 
masonry is essentially a social institution, 
and that the ever-flowing bowl was then 
deemed the special symbol of sociality : 
'May ev'ry true brother of the compass 

and square 
Have a big-belly'd bottle, when harass'd 

with care ! ' 
Such were the honest and heartfelt senti- 
ments of the Tarbolton masons. Harassed 
with care as Burns had been from child- 
hood, and possessed as he was of an irre- 
sistible sociability, the convivial meetings 
of the craft were bound to prove attractive 
to him, even apart from his poetic dreams 
as to liberty, equality, and fraternity. A 
small, shabby cottage in Tarbolton is still 
in existence, which was the inn where the 
St David's Lodge of the village made him 
' a brother of the mystic tie ' on ith July 
93 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

1781. Shortly before this, as it was to 
prove, world-famous event in the history 
of the lodge, a junction had taken place 
between it and the St James' Lodge, the 
name St David's being retained; but a 
separation between them took place in 
June 1782, when Burns adhered to the St 
James' Lodge, of which, in July 1784, he 
was elected depute-master. The brethren 
of the latter lodge continued to be the 
' companions of his social joy,' even after 
he removed to Mossgiel, and it was to 
them he addressed the masonic ' Farewell,' 
when he ' intended going to Jamaica.' 
Whether his association with the Free- 
masons was largely responsible for fur- 
thering in Burns such drinking habits as 
he contracted need not engage our con- 
sideration, for the simple reason that since, 
as we have seen, drinking habits were 
then in Scotland more the rule than the 
exception, Burns could not have been the 
very sociable person that he was without, 
more or less, contracting drinking habits. 
Doubtless the masonic connection also 
helped to acquaintanceship with a few 
influential patrons who were of advant- 
age to him in obtaining subscriptions 
94 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

for his book of poems ; but after all Burns 
was not dependent for poetic success either 
on Masons or patrons. The fates had de- 
signed him to be the rare poetic genius 
that he was, and his fellow-men could 
neither mend nor mar him as a poet, 
though his very peculiar social circum- 
stances had, without doubt, a good deal 
to do with so far marring him as a man. 
The most important, if an indirect, con- 
sequence of the association of Burns 
with Tarbolton Freemasonry was that it 
accidentally inspired him to write ' Death 
and Dr Hornbook.' It was probably when 
— * canty ' with the ' clachan yill ' drunk in 
the lodge — he was on his way home from 
one of the Mason meetings that the rough 
outline of the poem was conceived ; and it 
is stated as a fact that the person whom 
it satirises — John Wilson, the parish 
schoolmaster, who also kept a small 
shop, at which he sold drugs — had at a 
meeting of the lodge 'aired his medical 
skill' in a manner that had given the poet 
offence. According to all accounts Wilson, 
if, like many of his tribe, a little pedantic 
and small-minded, was a worthy person 
enough; and hardly deserving of a punish - 
95 



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Adieu ! a heart-warm. 
Dear brothers of the 

Ye favour'd, ye enlighti 
Companions of my so 
Tho' I to foreign lane 

Pursuing Fortune's slid 
With melting heart, i 

I'll mind you still, tho' 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

ment so tingling as he must have felt this 
to be. Nevertheless he may have less hurt 
the amour propre of the poet than tickled 
his sense of humour ; and probably mere 
joy in the triumphant exercise of his art 
may have made Burns somewhat oblivious 
to the cruelty of what after all was more 
a humorous than a bitter castigation. 
Even before he obtained fame throughout 
Ayrshire, and latterly throughout Scot- 
land, by his published book of verses, 
Burns must have acquired some kind of 
notoriety in the district; and we may 
well believe that his sayings and doings 
supplied a good deal of matter for won- 
der and speculation to the gossips of the 
village and the farmhouses. His impressive 
personality and his remarkable gifts of 
talk and repartee were alone sufficient to 
give him exceptional notoriety even if he 
had never written a stanza. Conscious of 
his growing personal ascendancy in all 
companies he now began to blossom into 
something of a rustic dandy. 'Half -fed, 
half -sar kit ' he might be, but on Sundays 
he managed to make more than a fair 
show as regards his outward man. To 
wear the 'only tied hair in the parish' 
a 97 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

would cost him but little, and as most 
of the farmers and farmers' sons wore a 
plaid at the kirk, it need not surprise us 
to learn that he also wore one ; but we 
are told that he chose one of an excep- 
tional colour, and that he * wrapped it in 
a particular manner round his shoul- 
ders,' which colour and arrangement 
would, of course, cost him nothing either : 
here, as elsewhere in his earlier years, 
he indicates a happy facility in making 
the best of his adverse circumstances. 
The brilliant-eyed, handsome young far- 
mer with the tied hair, and the yellow- 
brown plaid wrapped so sprucely round 
his shoulders, must have perfectly suc- 
ceeded in making himself a conspicuous 
object for the glances of the rustic belles 
in Tarbolton Church. Further, Burns 
tells us that with ladies he had ' a frank 
address and politesse ' ; and here, as in 
most allusions to himself, he indulges in 
no vain boasts. Sillar states that he was 
greatly struck with his facility 'in ad- 
dressing the fair sex,' whom he happened 
to meet on the fields between the services. 
'Many times,' says Sillar, 'when I have 
been bashfully anxious how to express 
98 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

myself, he would have entered into con- 
versation with them with the greatest 
ease and freedom, and it was generally a 
death-blow to our conversation, however 
agreeable, to meet a female acquaint- 
ance.' 

It was most likely during these walks on 
Sunday that he first made the acquaint- 
ance not only of Montgomery's Peggy 
but of her most famed successor in his 
affections. Highland Mary, who is reputed 
to have been for some time a dairymaid 
at Coilsfield or Montgomery Castle, em- 
bosomed amongst the woods in the valley 
of the Fail about a mile south of Tar- 
bolton. It was amongst these same woods 
that, according to his own poetic account, 
he wandered with Highland Mary on the 
day of their last farewell : 
' Ye banks and braes and streams around 

The castle o' Montgomery, 
Green be your woods, and fair your 
flowers, 

Your waters never drumlie ! 
There Summer first unfauld her robes 

And there the langest tarry ; 
For there I took the last f areweel 

0' my sweet Highland Mary ! ' 
99 

tore. 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

The spot where the farewell interview 
took place is of course 'still pointed out,' 
and a Bible, supposed to have been given 
her as a parting gift and pledge, is pre- 
served at Alloway ; but many things 
which enthusiasts have accepted as gospel 
regarding Burns and Mary Campbell could 
have been made known only by the ghosts 
of the one or the other. Burns refers to 
the ' hallowed grove,' 

* Where by the winding Ayr we met 
To live one day of parting love.' 
But by • the hallowed grove ' he probably 
did not mean any particular clump of 
trees or shrubs, but merely the Mont- 
gomery woods in general; and he may 
have indulged in poetical license as to 
the name of the river. It is, however, as 
likely as not that the parting took place 
near the junction of the Fail with the 
Ayr, for it was, naturally, thereabout 
that he would leave the woods either for 
Lochlea or Mossgiel or Mauchline. Any- 
one, therefore, who takes the low, the 
Ayr, road to Mauchline — which crosses 
the road from Tarbolton station to the 
village about half a mile from the station 
— may as he crosses the bridge over the 
100 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



Fail congratulate himself on having been 
reasonably near the region of the part- 
ing spot; or if he prefers to gratify his 
curiosity with more definite, but of course 
purely imaginary, information, he may 
inquire for it at the village of Failford. 
While one of the most conspicuous of 
the rustic beaus in the Tarbolton parish 
church, and often spending much of the 
interval between the services in walks 
and talks with one or more young women, 
Burns was also accustomed to join the 
groups of male conversationalists in the 
churchyard. Amongst these groups and 
the bands of rural worshippers winding 
their way up the hillsides to their several 
farms, he often held debate on high 
matters of doctrine. The douce elderly 
farmers he frequently puzzled and some- 
times scandalised by his fearless and novel 
criticism of their ancient, time-honoured 
opinions; and with many he necessarily 
won the reputation of being a dangerously 
heretical young man, whom it was easier 
to condemn than to answer. 
Being both of an independent and poetical 
cast of mind Burns in his theological and 
other opinions was not always consistent. 
101 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

They differed a good deal according to 
his mood. His interest in theology was 
indeed but secondary; it arose mainly 
from his distaste for Calvinism and Puri- 
tanism. He was disposed, if anything, to 
hold aloof from ecclesiasticisni ; but his 
sympathies were, of course, more with 
the liberal lack of doctrine amongst the 
Moderates than with the excessive doc- 
trinal rigidity of the Evangelicals ; and 
extremely democratic though he was in 
his social sentiments, he was in no way 
partial to popular election in the Kirk, or 
as he put it, to the election of the herds 
by ' the brutes themselves.' The reason 
was that the mass of the people loved the 
nervous excitement or emotional intoxi- 
cation produced by the ' tidings of damna- 
tion' harangues, which harangues Burns 
could not at all away with. The minister 
of Tarbolton was happily for him not an 
Evangelical : 

*Auld Wodrow lang has wrought 
mischief ' ; 
so Burns represents the orthodox as la- 
menting, which also means that Burns 
himself quite approved of ' Auld Wodrow,' 
though we have no further information 
102 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

as to his relations with him. With his as- 
sistant and successor, 'gude Macmath,' 
ordained 6th May 1782, he was evidently 
on very friendly terms, as witness his 
'Epistle to Macmath,' along with which, 
be it noted, he enclosed a copy of 'Holy 
Willie's Prayer.' 

Latterly, while he was still at Lochlea, the 
pretensions of Burns as a rhymer must 
have become known. It would be passing 
strange if he never showed or recited to 
any of the young women the songs he 
had made in their honour ; and we may 
well believe also that occasional verses of 
his which have never appeared in print, 
found some kind of surreptitious circula- 
tion in the district. Saunders Tait ex- 
pedlar and ex-soldier, and latterly tailor 
and, though occasionally, shebeener, even 
bailie in Tarbolton, gives in his 'Poems 
and Songs,' published in 1796, as one of 
his reasons for attacking Burns that he 
had ' made a sang ' on him. The ' sang' or 
verses of Burns on this eccentric village 
laureate must have been one of his most 
amusing, if one of his less reputable, pro- 
ductions, and may well have contained 
pictures of the more squalid phases of life 
103 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

in that village as realistic as the Mauchline 
saturnalia of ' The Jolly Beggars.' Indeed, 
since ' The Jolly Beggars ' survived almost 
by mere accident, and Burns latterly had 
only a very vague remembrance of hav- 
ing written it, it is as likely as not that 
several other pieces of his in the same 
vein have perished. Tait's verses are not 
only very ' rude and raploch ' in form, but 
grossly and densely squalid in tone. Not 
the faintest scintillation of genius relieves 
his homely vulgarity ; and if keen and 
caustic in intent, his wit is entirely of the 
abusive Billingsgate order. Little or no 
importance attaches to his blackguarding 
of Burns ; though his verses are not un- 
instructive as to the character of the talk 
and gossip then prevailing among certain 
coteries of the Tarbolton villagers. For 
the diatribes of the rather disreputable 
eccentric on Burns and the Burns family 
allowance must, however, be made, on 
account of his natural desire to have 
poetic revenge on the son, whose great 
poetic fame had probably also aroused 
his jealousy. 

The monotony of the poet's ploughman 

life at Lochlea was broken by his unsuc- 

104 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

cessful attempt, begun in 1781, to enter 
the flax-dressing trade in Irvine. The at- 
tempt was prompted by a desire to be in 
a position to marry EHson Begbie, the 
'lass of Cumnock banks'; btit since she 
refused him on the eve of his^ setting out 
to Irvine, his special motive for^persever- 
ance in his venture was gone ; and this 
doubtless assisted with various adverse 
circumstances in inducing him to relin- 
quish the attempt early in the following 
year. The main result of his Irvine episode 
was to widen his acquaintance with the 
less reputable members of society. His 
intimate friendship with the widely ex- 
perienced captain of a merchant vessel 
also assisted to give his ' mind a turn ' ; 
and, as he confesses, the acquaintanceship 
did him mischief as well as benefit. It 
helped to initiate him into what may be 
termed the practically cynical side of love- 
making, though he did not put the ideas 
of his friend Brown into practice at Irvine. 
Indeed during the chief part of his stay 
there he was, on account of his love dis- 
appointment, in a very desponding condi- 
tion, and quite disinclined for new love 
adventures. The town is thus associated 
105 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

with none of the romantic episodes of his 
career, and the momentoes of his connec- 
tion with it are of a very commonplace 
kind. What was the ' heckling shop ' of his 
partner Peacock still occupies its place in 
a tawdry and squalid lane off the High 
Street ; and in the same lowly neighbour- 
hood are still to be seen the lodgings in 
which he wrote the melancholy, despond- 
ent letters to his father, and the pious, 
hypochondriacal verses which he finally 
published in his first Edinburgh edition. 
The surroundings are forbidding and de- 
pressing ; and the Irvine scenes are hardly 
worth a special errand to them, except by 
those enthusiasts whose curiosity is ' with- 
out bounds or limits.' 

The later months of the family's residence 
at Lochlea were rendered anxious and 
disagreeable by a lawsuit with their land- 
lord ; and they were also saddened by the 
now hopeless condition of the father's 
health, though his death, 13th February 
1784, was to him almost a merciful relief 
from his misfortunes. Had he survived 
he would have had to endure both the bit- 
ter mortification of what he would have 
deemed a wrongful defeat of his lawsuit, 
106 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

and the almost intolerable humiliation of 
bankruptcy. As for the family they so far 
mitigated their misfortunes by ranking as 
creditors on their father's estate for wages 
due them ; and on the rather slender sum, 
earned in what Saunders Tait and pro- 
bably others deemed a scandalously un- 
scrupulous fashion, were able to become 
tenants of the farm of Mossgiel. The poet 
thus entered on a new phase of his ex- 
perience. Whatever the amount and char- 
acter of the influence latterly exercised 
over him by his father he was now en- 
tirely freed from its restraint. The family 
it is true were still together as of old, and 
they owned the new farm in partnership, 
but Robert was now the recognised head 
of the house, and entirely at liberty to 
conduct himself as seemed good in his 
own eyes. 



MOSSGIEL, MAUCHLINE, AND KILMARNOCK 

MossGiEL being only about a mile and a 
half to the south-east of Mauchline, the 
poet by his removal found his circle of 
acquaintanceship widened rather than 
quite changed. Although Mauchline — 
from which the new farm was hardly a 
mile distant, and in which parish it was 
situated — now became the chief centre 
of his sociality, he not unfrequently had 
occasion to visit Tarbolton,- with the St 
James' Lodge, of which his connection 
was still preserved ; and with the more 
distant of his old neighbours he would 
often forgather at fairs and markets. 
The farm of Mossgiel occupies mainly a 
high ridge of ground of a considerably 
greater elevation than the Lochlea lands, 
and commanding extensive views in all 
directions. Its immediate neighbourhood 
is bleak and bare, but it is nearer than 
Lochlea to the woods of the southern 
tableland. The farmhouse and steading 
108 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

stand a park's breadth from the Mauch- 
line and Tarbolton road, while the road 
to Kilmarnock skirts the farmlands on 
the east. The straggling rows of trees 
skirting the Tarbolton road and two sides 
of the park suggest something of faded 
grandeur ; and probably owe their exist- 
ence to an ornamental design of Burns' 
friend, Gavin Hamilton, the Mauchline 
lawyer, who had leased the farm from the 
Earl of Loudoun, and built there a small 
cottage, with the intention of occupying 
it in summer. Tiring of his farm diversion 
h6 sublet Mossgiel to the Burns family. 
The present two-storey farmhouse as well 
as the farm buildings date from the latter 
half of the nineteenth century; but the 
tall hedge in front of the house is much 
older than it and was probably planted 
by Gavin Hamilton. The older trees round 
the farm were evidently in existence be- 
fore his time; and under one of them 
Burns is said to have been accustomed 
to recline. The farmhouse occupied by 
the Burns family was the two-roomed 
cottage erected by Gavin Hamilton. It 
was, doubtless, a more comfortable dwell- 
ing than most of the farmhouses of the 
109 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

period ; but its accommodation was so 
limited that Burns himself took up his 
quarters with the ploughman in the 
bothy, which — as is still by no means 
uncommon in Scotland — was a mere loft 
above the stable. This stable loft was 
the only literary workshop of the poet 
during the most fertile period of his 
muse. There after his day's labour in the 
fields or in the barn, he elaborated and 
wrote out the verses which had been as- 
suming a rude shape in his mind during 
the day ; and it is said he was accustomed 
to test their euphony and effectiveness 
of expression by causing his ploughman 
companion to read to him any stanzas 
about which he was in doubt. 
The Mossgiel farm did not turn out a 
better bargain than the two previous 
farms occupied by the family. While at 
Lochlea, Burns in a letter to his Montrose 
cousin wrote: 'We' — the Ayrshire farmers 
in general — ' are much at a loss for want 
of proper methods of farming ' ; and the 
family had not improved in their methods 
by the time they leased Mossgiel, which, if 
anything, was more difficult to work, ac- 
cording to the old methods, than Lochlea. 
110 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

The soil was naturally no better, and since 
the situation was higher and more ex- 
posed, harvests were even later ; and late 
seasons often meant the almost total loss 
of the corn crops. Unfortunately, also, in 
the one case from bad seed, and the 
other from bad weather, Burns had two 
unsuccessful harvests to start with. Of 
his second harvest we have a glimpse in 
his ' Third Epistle to Lapraik,' dated 13th 
September 1785. 

Clearly he refers to his own experience 
when he writes : 
' May Boreas never thrash your rigs, 
Nor kick your rickles aff their legs, 
Sendin the stuff o'er muirs an' haggs 
Like drivin' wrack ! ' etc. 
And he goes on : 

' I'm bizzie too, an' skelpin' at it ; 
But bitter, daudin' showers hae wat 
it,' etc. 
So he sets himself down, in devil-ma-care 
fashion, to w^rite a convivial rhyming 
epistle to Lapraik, until his jovial stanzas 
are cut short by a slight clearance in the 
weather : 

' But stooks are cowpit wi' the blast, 
And now the sinn keeks in the wast ; 
111 



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THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

Then I maun rin amang the rest, 

An' quat my chanter ; 
Sae I subscribe mysel' in haste, 
Yours, Rab the Ranter.' 
Four days later, 17th September, he began 
his ' Epistle to Macmath ' : 

'While at the stook the shearers 

cow'r 
To shun the bitter blaudin' show'r, 
Or, in gulravage rinnin', scow'r. 

To pass the time, 
To you I dedicate the hour 
In idle rhyme.' 
And from the length, and elaborate char- 
acter of the epistle, we may infer that he 
was, on that day, uninterrupted by any 
clearance of the weather, and that 'the 
bitter blaudin' show'r' continued to beat 
till evening on the doomed corn. 
Burns thus by irretrievable misfortunes 
lost both the impetus and the wherewithal 
to make any experiments in improved 
methods of farming ; and notwithstanding 
the considerateness of Gavin Hamilton, 
who, however, be it remembered, had his 
own rent to pay, the family would have 
found themselves in a more hopeless posi- 
tion than ever, but for the pecuniary suc- 
H 113 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

cess that ultimately attended Robert's 
publishing adventure. 

When Burns was elaborating in his stable 
loft the masterpieces of Scottish verse that 
were to win him sudden fame throughout 
Ayrshire and Scotland, his worldly out- 
look was darkening rather than improv- 
ing. There had been no real break to him 
in the old, monotonous drudgery, which 
had been his lot since childhood ; and the 
hope of deliverance from it, or mitigation 
of it by improved prospects as a farmer, 
seemed to be receding farther from him 
than ever. But he was not a man whose 
thoughts and acts were determined by 
quite ordinary considerations. Success as 
a farmer would, of course, have been a 
delightful experience to him. It might 
have made him in several respects an- 
other man ; but he was now entertaining 
hopes and ambitions beyond farming; and 
should he, as began to seem more than 
likely, have, from lack of a better paying 
occupation in Scotland, to become a ' poor 
negro-driver' in the West Indies, he 
deemed that he would be sufficiently con- 
soled for his misfortunes could he win 
Scotland's approbation as a poet. ' Pauvre 
114 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

inconnu,' he writes, shortly after his Edin- 
burgh triumph, 'as I then was, I had 
pretty nearly as high an idea of myself 
and of my works as I have at this mo- 
ment.' His adverse worldly circumstances 
in no degree affected his intellectual and 
poetical vitality, except byway of quicken- 
ing it. It is more than likely that had he, 
at this time, possessed good prospects of 
success as a farmer, he would not have 
achieved such immediately splendid suc- 
cess as a poet. At anyrate, the character 
and cast of much of the poetry he now 
wrote had evidently a connection with 
what he describes as the oversetting of 
his wisdom. The oversetting he attributes 
to his two unsuccessful years of farming 
at Mossgiel ; but in his Autobiography he 
is often rather mixed in his chronology ; 
probably he did not wait the result of the 
second harvest before seeking consolation 
in his old diversions. But, however that 
may be, while his rhyming was partly a 
solace for his worldly troubles, the over- 
setting of his wisdom was, as it happened, 
of no inconsiderable advantage to him as 
a poetic artist. Moralise over the failings 
of Burns as we may, we cannot but admit 
115 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

that he turned them to effective poetic 
account. Had he been more reputable as 
a man, he could hardly have been so 
peculiarly irresistible as a poet. Indeed, 
but for his varied amatory enterprises, 
and the increasing development of his 
jovial tendencies, we might not have had 
the remarkable poetic outburst which is 
the peculiar glory of the Mossgiel period ; 
and certainly what poetry he might have 
written would have lacked some of the 
most special qualities of that which he 
actually wrote. But, in fact, speculation 
about other possibilities is vain ; we have 
to accept Burns, both man and poet, as 
he is, recognising that if he had peculiar 
weaknesses they were also associated with 
other special traits that have won him the 
affection and admiration of the world. 
Never was there poetry more representa- 
tive than that of Burns of the actual 
character of the poet's life. If in form he 
in a manner echoed other versifiers, in 
substance he recorded what he himself 
had seen and experienced. Whatever his 
themes and however they were suggested, 
they were coloured in his verse by his own 
unmistakable personality. He exhibited 
116 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

himself in most of his passing moods and 
in nearly all the aspects of his character. 
He was ever making a clean breast of it 
to the world. Thus his verse is not un- 
f requently at war with convention ; it 
sometimes expresses sentiments of which 
moralists would disapprove; its passion 
and emotion are occasionally lawless; 
though often admirable in its grasp of 
reality and its exposure of what is mean 
and false, there are times when it ceases 
to conform to right reason, and to exhibit 
a just sense of propriety ; but it hardly 
ever fails to ring true to himself except 
when it lapses into sentimental English. It 
is human to the core, and it could hardly 
have been so variedly and penetratingly 
human — for his nature would not have 
been so deeply and variously touched — as 
it was, had he been the pattern person- 
ality which some of his too foolishly fond 
admirers would wish to persuade them- 
selves that he must have been. 
Much of the verse written by Burns at 
this time represents his observations and 
experiences in the village of Mauchline. 
Mauchline became a much more important 
factor in his life than Tarbolton ever was, 
117 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

and it bulks more largely in his poetry. 
The young women criticised in ' The Tar- 
bolton Lasses ' were not the village young 
women, but certain farmers' daughters 
in the parish ; whereas ' The Mauchline 
Belles' introduces us to the more cele- 
brated toasts of the Mauchline village. 
' Death and Dr Hornbook ', it is true, may 
fairly be regarded as a Tarbolton idyll, 
and the same village is in a manner as- 
sociated with the masonic ' Farewell ' and 
the vapid ' No Churchman am I ' : but 
Tarbolton imparts but little of its own 
flavour to any of these effusions, whereas 
such masterpieces as 'The Holy Fair', 
'The Jolly Beggars', and 'Holy WiUie's 
Prayer' are redolent of Mauchline from 
beginning to end. In addition to this, 
while his Mauchline experiences inspire 
and colour his verse in many indirect 
ways, it contains many passing allusions 
to the burgh, and several amusing thumb- 
nail sketches of its personalities such as 
those of Adam Armour, John Dove, John 
Humphrey, and James Smith, to name no 
more. 

This superior poetical predominance of 

Mauchline to Tarbolton was inevitable by 

118 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



reason of the fact that the Mossgiel period 
was one of much more poetical produc- 
tiveness than that of Lochlea, or indeed 
any other period of his life. With this 
productiveness the oversetting of his wis- 
dom had, as we have seen, a good deal to 
do; and the oversetting of his wisdom 
meant pretty constant errands, amatory 
or convivial, to Mauchline. Besides Mauch- 
line was much nearer to Mossgiel than 
Tarboltom was to Lochlea. It faced him in 
the lower grounds near the woods but a 
short mile away ; and if he stepped out of 
doors after supper on a starry or moon- 
light night or a fine summer evening, the 
desire of distraction from his worldly 
cares, or relief from the monotony of his 
round of toil, would strongly reinforce the 
amatory or social impulses, that made him 
almost instinctively direct his strolling 
footsteps towards the burgh. There in that 
ancient, dull-looking, old-world country 
town 'lay his game.' There were to be 
found the amatory diversions and the 
social distractions which were most readily 
accessible to him. His mistresses and his 
more constant male associates and inti- 
mates belonged to a comparatively humble 
119 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

rank in life. The peer in intellectual and 
social gifts of any of his contemporaries, 
and, peasant though he was, able to lord 
it in general conversation in any com- 
pany, he was dependent for his social 
hours on persons who, shrewd and intelli- 
gent though they might be within their 
own sphere of observation and experience, 
were for the most part plain, ordinary 
tradesmen or mechanics or peasant far- 
mers, without any particular refinement 
in their tastes or manners, and rather 
unaccustomed to that species of social 
intercourse termed intellectual conver- 
sation. But to Burns humanity of every 
grade and class was a constant source of 
interest ; the humours of even the lowest 
and most vulgar company were matters 
to him of lively curiosity; and being a 
professional student of human nature 
he never failed to find his social hours 
instructive as well as pleasant. 
Mauchline, whatever may have been the 
case in the eighteenth century, bears, now, 
little or no resemblance, in outward as- 
pect, to Tarbolton. Yet it is by no means 
a busy-looking place, and is distinguished 
by none of the tall chimneys which are 
120 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

the usual ornamental signals of modern 
industry. The main streets branching off 
from the cross have the dull, empty ap- 
pearance characteristic of smaller towns 
in the agricultural districts, the main 
daily happenings being, apparently, the 
passing of a tooting motor-car, or a swift 
cyclist with his eyes intent on his machine 
or the road in front of him. The monoton- 
ous lines of the plain two-storey houses 
are relieved by very few shops ; and only 
the glimpse of an occasional peeping 
female in a doorway, or the appearance 
at long intervals of solitary male person- 
ages on quite inexplicable errands, con- 
tradicts the plausible hypothesis that in 
bright noontide the inhabitants have all 
gone to bed. The explanation is that while 
the men are mostly busy in the box-mak- 
ing shops or the red-sandstone quarries, 
the elder children are at the board schools, 
and the women occupied with their house- 
hold duties, or gossiping indoors. 
As a matter of fact, Mauchline is quite a 
thriving place, as is attested by constant 
additions to the rows of neat red-sand- 
stone cottages, with bright flower beds in 
the outskirts of the town, and the pleasant- 
121 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

looking villas that peep out here and 
there from amongst the woods. There are 
not, as in Tarbolton, any signs of a hopeless 
struggle with a too adverse fate, no tumb- 
ling walls, no ancient thatched cottages of 
quite woebegone ruinous aspect, no empty 
dwellings with boarded-up windows and 
roofs half fallen in. The main streets have 
a quite presentable if not very spruce ap- 
pearance ; and the houses, if not quite 
modern, have, most of them, been entirely 
renovated since the days of Burns. The 
steady, if moderate, prosperity of the 
place, has, indeed, tended almost entirely 
to efface its eighteenth century similitude. 
Almost the only existing relics of the 
poet's connection with it are the room — 
in a now somewhat dilapidated-looking 
two-storey thatched house — which was a 
'convenient harbour,' for Jean Armour, 
when he decided at last to marry her; 
the dwelling of Adjutant Morison ; Gavin 
Hamilton's house, hard by the kirkyard, 
and adjoining an old tower, the remains 
of a priory established in Mauchline in 
the twelfth century for the monks of 
Melrose; and the kirkyard itself, which, 
moreover, is in part peopled by the poet's 
122 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

own contemporaries, and holds the bones 
of most of the Mauchline personalities 
enshrined in his verse. Some of his own 
children were buried in the Armour lairs 
before he left for Dumfries. The ' lovely- 
Mary Morison,' a victim, like the 'heavenly' 
Miss Burnet, of consumption, is here com- 
memorated as having died ' 29 June 1791, 
aged 20.' Here also ' sleeps ' Gavin Hamil- 
ton, whom 'canting wretches,' and especi- 
ally ' Holy Willie,' ' blamed ' ; and not far 
away is the ' last abode ' of Holy Willie's 
own 'sair-worn clay.' The Rev. William 
Auld is honoured by a memorial stone 
appropriate to his position as pastor of 
the parish ; and, with a like regard to the 
fitness of things, Agnes Gibson — 'Poosie 
Nansie ' — with her daughter, ' Racer Jess,' 
repose side by side in an unobtrusive 
neuk. The ancient, mean structure of 
Burns' time, which superseded the kirk, 
w^ith 'a tabernacle beautiful to the eye,' 
to which the reformer Wishart was denied 
entrance, has been replaced by quite a 
typical Scottish country parish kirk of 
the earlier nineteenth-century fashion — 
a plain Gothic building with a square 
turreted tower; and otherwise the sur- 
123 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

roundings of the kirkyard are very dif- 
ferent from what they were when they 
resounded to the tent oratory of 'The 
Holy Fair.' 

Regarding that immortal satire it may be 
a sufficient answer to the objections urged 
by the ' unco guid ' to its mocking spirit, 
that here, as in all his descriptive verse 
that counts, Burns was a realist and 
not a caricaturist, and that the descrip- 
tion does no violence to the facts. The 
holy fair he depicted was the holy fair as 
it actually appeared to one who knew it 
thoroughly. The successive diets of oratory 
and their interludes are described by him 
in terms as exactly accordant as possible 
with his oWn opinion of them. Where 
there is exaggeration, it is the exaggera- 
tion essential to effectively descriptive 
art. Thus we are really not asked to be- 
lieve that the stentorian shouts of Black 
Russel did actually awaken the echoes of 
the hills ; we are only compelled to realise 
that his voice was something very tre- 
mendous, which according to all accounts 
it was. Nor need we quite credit that 
some of the half - asleep rustics were, 
through the stertorous snoring of a 
124 



OF ROBERT BURNS 



neighbour, induced to imagine in their 
dreams that they were nearing the roar- 
ing of hell-fire ; though the snoring may 
have been of a somewhat startling char- 
acter, and their ludicrously alarmed ap- 
pearance on awakening may well have 
been altogether consistent with the poet's 
humorous hypothesis. What humorous 
exaggeration there may be in the satire 
is but the quite legitimate artifice of a 
great artist who wishes to impress the 
scene with sufficient vividness on the 
reader's imagination. It is also vain to ob- 
ject that the satire savours of blasphemy; 
for the blasphemy belonged rather to the 
fair than to the poet's account of it ; and 
there is even good reason to believe that 
the satire had more than a little to do with 
the discontinuance of 'occasions' which 
had gradually assimilated too many of 
the holiday characteristics of the Scottish 
fairs. Also, though the oratory might 
often be well meant and for the most 
part accordant with the convictions of 
the speakers, this did not save it from 
being absurd from the point of view of 
Burns ; and his duty as an artist was to 
reveal its absurdity in the most effective 
125 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

terms of his art. As for the audience, 
Burns appraised its various human in- 
gredients as only a peasant genius could 
have done, and his picture of its foolish 
old-world mixture of the flesh and the 
spirit is one of his most finished master- 
pieces. From the time that we see them 
as a lively picturesque crowd hurrying 
down the hill on the bright Sunday morn- 
ing to the burgh kirkyard— spruce far- 
mers ambling on their nags, and humble 
cottars in their 'Sunday's best' on foot, 
' swankies young in braw braid-claith,' 
and barefit lasses glittering in ' silks and 
scarlets' — each successive scene of, so to 
speak, their day's entertainment, secular 
and sacred, is shown us with resistless 
kaleidoscopic vividness. 
Of the old change-houses that were then 
filled * but and ben ' with ' yill-caup com- 
mentators ' none now remain. Even auld 
Nanse Tinnock's, which had a back en- 
trance to the yard, and in which on week- 
days Burns himself, according to his own 
account, sometimes studied politics ' over 
a glass of gude auld Scotch drink,' is no 
longer a public ; and the site of the White- 
f oord Arms —then the principal inn of the 
126 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

place, and, doubtless, on a Holy Fair occa- 
sion frequented, as on other Sundays and 
other fair days, rather by the 'farmers 
gash ' than by their cottars — is now occu- 
pied by a general store. Here Burns pre- 
sided at the gatherings of those young 
amatory revolutionists who termed them- 
selves ' The Court of Equity ' ; and here, 
also, he was accustomed to meet his more 
well-to-do acquaintances. Thus he writes 
to Factor Kennedy : 
' But, as I'm sayin', please step to Dow's, 
An' taste sic gear as Johnnie brews,' etc. 
John Dowie or Dove, the landlord of the 
Whitefoord Arms, was evidently a jovial 
host of a quite secular type, who cared 
nothing for 'holy fairs' except for the 
custom they brought him : 

' What was his religion, 
Whae'er desires to ken. 

To some other warl' 

Maun follow the carl, 
For here Johnnie Pigeon had nane ! ' 
While these two inns are now no more, 
the words ' Poosie Nansie's Hostelry, the 
Beggars' Houf,' confronts us in large 
capitals on the gable of a house at the 
kirkyard end of the Cowgate. But, as we 
127 



ill 

ill 

«!^ - 



1111 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

have seen, ' Poosie Nansie ' now reposes 
in the kirkyard ; and, though doubtless 
stray vagrants are still able to find in the 
burgh the accommodation suited to their 
special tastes and means, vagrancy is not 
now the remunerative profession that it 
was. The picturesque ragamuffins who are 
introduced to us as holding their ' splore ' 
in Nansie's houf — the crippled mendicant 
soldier with his cuts and scars, attended 
with his martial chuck of ancient regi- 
mental notoriety, the pygmean fiddler, the 
capering Merry Andrew, the sturdy caird, 
the guzzling tinkler-hizzie, the 'rauclin' 
beggar-woman (who could thieve as well 
as beg, and for her patronage of whom, 
probably, ' Poosie Nansie ' got into trouble 
as a ' fencer ' of stolen goods), the limping, 
dissolute bard and his dissolute dame — 
these were types of a period when mendi- 
cancy, direct or indirect, was one of the 
recognised institutions of the country. 
All these different varieties of the pro- 
fession were after their own fashion re- 
munerative ; but even when the fraternity 
held high festival they were by no means 
particular as to the appointments of the 
banqueting chamber. In 'Poosie Nansie's' 
I 129 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

parlour and sleeping-chamber combined, 
neither chairs nor beds were seemingly- 
allowed the guests. The jolly company 
of roysterers squatted promiscuously on 
the floor, contemptuously disregardful of 
civilised conveniences, and quite indif- 
ferent to the raids of fleas from chicken 
cavies. The present establishment, on the 
other hand, is quite modern and up-to-date 
in its appointments. It preserves few of 
the special features of the old 'houf.' 
While occupying the veritable site of the 
old hostelry, it bears no particular resem- 
blance to it. On the contrary it specially 
caters for family parties of quite doucely 
inclined Burnsites, whose favourite feast 
is presumably a high tea ; and in edifying 
disregard of the traditions of the house 
its banqueting-chamber is adorned with 
a framed and illustrated copy, not of the 
splendid cantata which has conferred on 
this anciently squalid corner of the 
burgh immortal remembrance, but of 
the highly exemplary production, dear to 
Scottish piety, 'The Cotter's Saturday 
Night.' 

Of course not only Mauchline but nearly 

all its neighbourhood is more or less as- 

130 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

sociated with the name of Burns. The 
memories of him have quite eclipsed the 
memories of Reformers and Covenanters. 
As we enter the burgh from Mossgiel 
we pass, on the right, the gate to Nether- 
place, on the then mistress of which 
Burns was moved — probably from some 
supposed offence — to publish certain pe- 
culiarly bitter diatribes ; but happily his 
other verses associated with the beauti- 
ful country near Mauchline are more in 
harmony with its character. The 'wild 
romantic groves' of Barskimming are 
with its owner, the 'aged judge,' Lord 
Miller, commemorated in a fine stanza of 
' The Vision ' ; and the ' Stately Lugar,' 
which winds through its grounds to the 
Ayr, was evidently one of his favourite 
streams. Nearer to the town was one of 
his special haunts, the ' braes of Balloch- 
myle ' where, doubtless, soon after the ar- 
rival of the new owners of the estate, he 
chanced to spy the 'lovely Wilhelmina 
Alexander,' whose charms immediately 
on his return home he set himself to cele- 
brate in rather mannered verses of the 
semi-English variety. Beyond Balloch- 
myle are Catrine woods: 
131 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

' The Catrine woods were yellow seen 
The flowers decayed on Catrine lea.' 
Thus the poet begins his lament for the 
hard fate of the Whitef oords in being com- 
pelled to part with their ancestral estate 
of Ballochmyle. The mansion-house of 
Catrine belonged to Professor Dugald 
Stewart, who inherited it from his father, 
and usually spent a portion of his summer 
there : 

'Learning and worth in simple meas- 
ure trode 
From simple Catrine, their long-loved 
abode.' 
In the village of Ochiltree, the hills of 
which parish faced him to the southward 
from Mossgiel, Burns found a congenial 
friend in the schoolmaster, 'Winsome 
Willie,' who also essayed the Muse; and 
later by his amorous escapades he at- 
tracted the attention of Tam Walker, the 
rhyming tailor of the village, to whom 
he addressed the indecorous 'Reply' be- 
ginning : 

' What ails ye now, ye lousie bitch, 

To thrash my back at sic a pitch ? ' 

A little beyond the village is also Glen- 

conner, then leased by the Tennants, who 

132 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

were special friends of the Burns' family : 

' Auld comrade dear, and brother sinner, 

How's a' the folk about Glenconner ? ' 

Thus Burns began his rather mixed epistle 

to one of the sons. 

With Kilmarnock, the weaving and mar- 
ket-town some seven miles northward of 
Mossgiel, our Bard, as the years went on, 
came to have more and more intimate rela- 
tions. At this time, and mainly through the 
enterprise of Lord Glencairn, it was begin- 
ning to assume something of its present 
aspect, its narrow, confused streets and 
lanes, and neuks of low, thatched, weavers' 
cottages having been lately supple- 
mented by a new street, after the modern 
fashion of that time, running southward 
along the Riccarton road; while a great 
impetus had been given to its prosperity 
by the introduction of an additional form 
of weaving — that of carpets. The bulk of 
its inhabitants were then engaged in 
weaving and in the boot and shoemaking 
trade. It was thus a principal focus of the 
anti-patronage movement in Ayrshire ; 
and the Laigh Kirk Congregation had 
been involved in a famous disputed settle- 
ment, which dragged on for about ten 
133 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

years — from 1763 to 1774. Similar violent 
opposition was made to the settlement of 
an obnoxious presentee in 1785, with the 
result that Mackinlay, a ' great favourite 
of the million,' finally got appointed. This 
great triumph for the Kilmarnock wab- 
sters and sotiters is the theme of mock 
celebration by Burns in ' The Ordination ' : 
' Kilmarnock wabsters, fidge an' claw, 

An' pour your creeshie nations ; 
An' ye wha leather rax an' draw, 

Of a' denominations ; 
Swith ! to the Laigh Kirk, ane an' a', 

An' there tak up your stations ; 
Then aff to Begbie's in a raw. 
An' pour divine libations 
For joy this day.' 
Previous to writing 'The Ordination' 
Burns had in 'The Twa Herds' made great 
sport of a remarkable scene in the Ayr 
Presbytery between two leaders of the 
Evangelicals, Black Russel, minister of 
the High Kirk, Kilmarnock, and Alex- 
ander Moodie of the neighbouring parish 
of Riccarton, who were at loggerheads 
as to the boundaries of their respective 
parishes. By such remarkably outspoken 
and clever productions on the burning 
134 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

questions of the day, he leapt into fame 
as the recognised laureate of the New 
Light party ; and on the occasions — which 
latterly became ijretty frequent — when, 
bold, burly, and humorous, he rode on his 
' weel-gaun fillie ' along the crooked, nar- 
row, and shabby streets of the weaving 
burgh, he was doubtless the observed of 
many not quite friendly observers. 
These two pieces, with 'Holy Willie's 
Prayer' and 'The Holy Fair' conferred 
on Burns a rhyming fame throughout 
Stewart Kyle such as he could not have 
won by the sublimest odes and the most 
touching love lyrics. They were topical 
from beginning to end and topical with a 
vengeance. Ecclesiastical matters were the 
chief topics of the time, and excitement 
about them was then running very high. 
As he himself mentions, ' the hue and cry 
against patronage was then at its worst ' ; 
and this meant that the two great parties 
in the Kirk were then in a condition of 
acute mutual irritation. From the very na- 
ture of the case ecclesiastical disputes tend 
to generate a peculiar bitterness ; for each 
party deems itself in a manner bound to 
consider the other sinfully in the wrong. 
135 



POOSIE NANSIE'S AT MAUCHLINE 

From a Painting by Monro S. Orr 



' When lyart leaves bestrew the yird, 

Or wavering like the bauckie-bird, 
Bedim cauld Boreas' blast ; 
When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte, 

And infant frosts begin to bite, 
In hoary cranreuch drest ; 
As night, at e'en, a merry core 

O' randie, gangrel bodies, 
In Poosie Nancie's held the splore, 

To drink their orra daddies ; 



Wi' quaffing and laughing. 
They ranted an' they sang, 

Wi' jumping and thumping, 
The vera girdle rang.' 




1 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

With widening intelligence religious tol- 
eration has among many Christians come 
to be recognised as a kind of Christian 
virtue; but this, even yet, is recognised 
more in theory than in practice ; and 
amongst what Burns termed ' the gloomy, 
fiery ' Presbyterians of his day — especially 
the 'Old Light' party — it was deemed 
rather a vice than a virtue. As for Burns 
he could not in the least tolerate the in- 
tolerance of that party. 'I ever could ill 
endure,' he writes, 'those surly cubs of 
" chaos and old night." ' His satires against 
them abounded, therefore, in personalities; 
and the personal allusions were selected 
with a skill, and expressed with a con- 
densed felicity, a vigorous directness, and 
a graphic wit that were irresistible. He 
thus at once became a marked man in the 
ecclesiastical community — feared as much 
as he was hated by the one party, while 
by the other his satires were read with 
shouts of applause and roars of laughter. 
This local ecclesiastical fame did much to 
secure an immediate sale for his poems, 
which, as all the world knows, were first 
published at Kilmarnock in 1786. But, 
indeed, for the fact that he was able to 
137 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

obtain the security of some of the well-to- 
do laymen of the New Light party he 
could not— virtually penniless as he then 
was — have succeeded in finding anyone to 
undertake the publication of his book; 
and of course few, or none, of the other 
party were named amongst his subscribers. 
Amongst the keenest supporters of the 
publishing scheme was John Goldie or 
Goudie, wine merchant in Kilmarnock, an 
accomplished student of science, as well 
as a learned and advanced theologian, 
whom Burns addresses as : 

' Goudie, terror o' the Whigs, 
Dread o' black coats and reverend 
wigs.' 
And of course another of his great friends 
was the popular Tarn Samson, a flourish- 
ing nurseryman and seedsman, and in his 
leisure hours a jolly Freemason and con- 
vivialist, a roaring curler, a clever fisher, 
a noted sportsman on the moors, and in 
the opinion of Burns and many more the 
prince of good fellows. With these and 
similar friends, including Robert Muir, 
Major Parker and his brother Hugh, and 
other obscure worthies known or un- 
known to tradition. Burns had evidently 
138 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

much jovial intercourse in 'Auld Killie'; 
and in 1786 he was made an honorary 
member of the Kilwinning St John's 
Lodge of Freemasons, Kilmarnock, of 
which Major Parker was Grand Master. 
Though the town has been practically re- 
built since the poet's time, and has greatly 
overflowed its old boundaries, the enthusi- 
astic Burns pilgrim — after an inspection 
of the relics and manuscripts in the taste- 
ful monumental erection in the Kay Park 
— may find gratification in still discovering 
a few mementoes in the town relating to 
the poet or his writings. The attic where 
his poems were put through the press, the 
house of Tam Samson, the tower of the 
Laigh Kirk — though the kirk itself has 
been rebuilt — still exist in a manner as 
they were in the poet's days; but 'Beg- 
bie's ' of the devout wabsters and souters 
has been rebuilt and, it may be for some 
obscure religious reason, is now named 
The Angel Hotel. In the Laigh Kirk bury- 
ing-ground may be seen the tombstone of 
Tam Samson, with a verse from the anti- 
cipatory classic elegy by Burns ; and not 
far from it is that of the ' Robertson har- 
angue nae mair ' of ' The Ordination,' who 
139 



THE AULD AYRSHIRE 

was minister of the first charge, and also 
that of Mackinlay, minister of the second 
charge, the Evangelical hero of the same 
poem and 'The Simple James' of 'The 
Kirk's Alarm.' 

With his visit to Edinburgh the poet's con- 
nection with^ Ayrshire practically ceased ; 
and Dumfriesshire did not play the same 
part in his poetry as Ayrshire did. It is 
mainly as a writer of epigrams and epi- 
taphs and political squibs and ballads and 
several lyrics — the majority not in his 
best vein — that his name is specially as- 
sociated with the county of his adoption ; 
and the scene of even the chief poem of 
the Dumfries period, ' Tarn o' Shanter,' is 
laid in Ayrshire. We have no such racy 
sketches of Dumfriesshire scenes, rural or 
urban, as we have of the county where 
he was born and bred. This may partly be 
accounted for by the consideration that 
his poetic pen was in a manner fettered 
by his position as exciseman ; but in any 
case the fact remains that, apart from his 
songs, he may be regarded as mainly and 
distinctively the poet of Ayrshire. Ayr- 
shire, for good or evil, made him largely 
what he was, and though some of his 
140 



OF ROBERT BURNS 

more notable lyrics were written after he 
left it he did not find in his new surround- 
ings the inspiration for any set of verses 
at all comparable to his great Ayrshire 
masterpieces. 



INDEX TO AULD AYRSHIRE 



PAGE 

Aiken, Robert 31 

Alexander, Wilhelmina 131 

Alloway 40, 51 

Armour, Adam 118 

Armour, Jean 88, 122 

Auld, Rev. William 123 

'Auld Farmer, The' 15 

Ayr 28,33 

Auld Brig o' 36-39 

Ayrshire 3 



Bachelors' Club, The .... 88, 92 

Ballantine, John 31 

Ballochmyle 131 

Ballochniel 67 

Barskimming 131 

Begbie, Elison 105 

Begbie's 134, 139 

Brown Carrick Hill 46 

Brown, Richard 105, 122 

Brown, Samuel 67 

Burnet, Miss 123 

Burns, Robert, birth of 1 

Circumstances of 2 

Time of 4 

Peculiar opportunity .... 10 

Peasanthood 11 

Indebted to environment .... 11 

Allusions to nature 12 

' Auld Farmer ' 14 

The poet of Ayrshire 21 

References to Coila 23, 25 

Allusions to the sea 26 

Connection with Ayr .... 28 

Acquaintance in 30 

His interest in natiu-e .... 49 

Schooldays of 51 

Worldly prospects of .... 52 

Life at Mount Oliphant .... 54 

At Dairy mple School .... 60 

142 



INDEX TO AULD AYRSHIRE 

PAGE 

Burns, Robert — Acquaintanceship with sur- 
rounding country 61 

Visit to Kirkoswald 66 

Flirtation with Peggy Thomson . . 69 

At Lochlea 76 

— ^ — Love affairs 79 

Social intercourse 83 

Forms the Bachelors' Club ... 88 

Becomes a Freemason .... 93 

Dandyism 97 

Flirtations 98 

Highland Mary episode .... 99 

Doctrinal talks 100 

Song on Saunders Tait .... 103 

Visit to Irvine 105 

At Mossgiel 108 

Lack of success as farmer .... 110 

Oversetting of his wisdom . . . 115 

Poetic outburst 116 

Connection with Mauchline . . . 117 

Social intimates 120 

His 'Holy Fair' 124 

At Kilmarnock 183 

Ecclesiastical satires 136 

Publication of poems 137 

Kilmarnock supporters and friends . 188 

The poet of Ayrshire rather than Dum- 
fries 140 

Burns, William 53, 73, 78 

Death of 106 

Mrs William 78 

Campbell, Mart 100 

Candlish, James 60 

Cassilis, Countess of 63 

Cassilis, Earl of 63 

Cassilis Downans, The 61 

Chalmers, Willie 31 

Coila 23, 24, 25 

Coilsfleld 99 

Cottage, The. See Alloway. 

'Coiirt of Equity,' The 127 

Culzean Castle 62 

Cumnock Hills 33 

Currie, Dr 42, 53 

143 



INDEX TO AULD AYRSHIRE 

PAOE 

Dalrymple, Rev. William .... 29 

Dancing 83 

Davidson, John 71 

'Death and Dr Hornbook' . . . 73,95 

Doon, The 50,51 

Doon, The Brig of 39, 45 

Doonholm 47 

Dowie, or Dove, John .... 118, 127 

' Faa, Johnny ' 63 

Fail, The . - 74 

Failford 101 

Freemasonry 93 

Gibson, Agnes 123 

Glenconner 132 

Goldie, John 137 

Graham, Douglas 71 

Hamilton, Gavin .... 109, 122, 123 

' Highland Mary ' 99 

'Holy Fair, The' 124 

'Holy Willie' 123 

Humphrey, John 118 

Irvine 105 

Kennedy, Factor John 127 

Kilmarnock 133 

Kilpatrick, Allan 61 

Nellie 61 

Kilwinning, St John's Lodge .... 188 

Kirk, authority of the 4 

Kirkoswald 66-72 

Knox, John 66 

Kyle. See Coila. 

Laigh Kirk 183, 188 

Lapraik, John Ill 

Lochlea 28, 78, 108, 106 

Logan, Major 81 

M'Oandlish, James 60 

Macgill, Dr William 29 

Mackinlay, Rev. John .... 184, 189 

' Macmath, Gude ' 103 

144 



INDEX TO AULD AYRSHIRE 



PAGB 

M'Taggart, Helen 71 

Mauchline 117, 120 

Kirkyard 122-3 

Maybole 65 

Miller of Barskimming, Lord .... 131 

Montgomery Castle 99 

Montgomery's Peggy 99 

Morison, Mary 123 

Moodie, Rev. Alexander 134 

Moore, Dr . . 30 

Mossgiel 108 

Mount Oliphant 51-72 

Muir, Robert 138 

William . 87 

Murdoch, John 45, 51 

Nbtherplace 131 

Niven, William 65 

Ochiltree 122, 132 

' Old Light ' Party 136 

'Ordination, The' 134 

Parker, Hugh 137 

Major 137 

Peacock, partner of Burns .... 106 

Perclewan 59 

Poosie Nansie's ....... 127 

' Racer Jess ' 123 

Ramsay, Allan 10 

ofOchtertyre 29 

Rankine, John 87 

Robertson, Rev. John 138 

Rocking 85 

•Russel, Black' 124,134 

St David's Lodge 93 

St James's Lodge 94, 108 

Samson, Tam 138 

Sillar, David 87, 89 

Simson, William 130 

Smith, of Mauchline, Miss .... 60 

James 118 

Stewart, Professor Dugald .... 132 
K 145 



INDEX TO AULD AYRSHIRE 

PAGE 

Tait, Saunders 103, 107 

' Tain o' Shanter,' originals of . . . 35 

Tarbolton 93, 108 

Tennants of Glenconner 132 

Thomson, Peggy 69, 71 

Tinnock's, Nanse 126, 129 

Turnberry ........ 72 

'Twa Herds, The' 132 

Walker, Sam - 132 

Whitefoord Arms, The 126 

Willie's Mill 73 

Wilson, John 95 

Wishart, George 123 

'Wodrow, Auld' 102 



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